Male student forced to step down after democratically elected as women’s officer at TUU
134 replies, posted
[QUOTE=proboardslol;47491456]You know you guys say that this is bullshit, but if I show you a picture of this saudi arabian women's rights conference full of men:
[img]http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02601/Untitled-1_copy_2601702b.jpg[/img]
you say "that's bullshit; how can women really be enfranchised when their advocates are nothing but men?"[/QUOTE]
That one dude in blue and white shirt
Well this all kind of depends, doesn't it?
Like, on one hand, i think the role definitely needs to be held by a women, someone who truly understands what it's like to be a women, which a man simply doesn't.
One the other hand... Yeah, i mean he was elected. I mean that all depends on whether or not men were allowed to vote(considering the role doesn't effect men at all, men shouldnt be allowed to vote). If men were allowed to vote, i agree that him being elected is pretty much null and void. It's like a non-US citizen voting to elect someone from their country to be POTUS.
Then there's the fact that, well, the protesters were really fucking aggressive and just full of bile. Men are perfectly capable of holding strong feminist values. I certainly do. In fact, having a man in a similar role, saying and doing the right things would bring a lot of positive male attention to the modern feminist movement. Men pay attention to other men more than they pay attention to women, that's the whole point around feminism, right? So it would make sense to use that to your advantage and get more shit done. Make him a figurehead.
[QUOTE=Kybalt;47491141]This is such a ridiculous straw-man, for a really stupid argument. First, for your analogy to be valid, women would have to be less than 20% of the student body at the University, and they would have had to vote in an MRA activist without the support of that 20%. Except that isn't what happened at all.[/QUOTE]
Why is the exact proportion important? You're arguing that it's okay for people to have their representative elected by people outside their group, so why does it matter whether 80% of the votes are from an outside group or 50%?
[QUOTE=Kybalt;47491141]Secondly, I don't think discriminating based on religion would help and I have the ability to see that a fundamentalist Christian could represent atheists on campus just fine, if he did his duties properly. So unless his religion prevents him from doing them, then they should not be voted in. Do you believe that because he's a man he couldn't have been effective in his position?[/QUOTE]
Yes, he could do that job just fine. There's nothing intrinsically about being outside the group that means he couldn't do the job. But that's not the decision of an outsider to make, it's up to the people being represented to decide who best represents their views.
If atheists feel that a particular Christian can best represent them then that's fine. But what you're suggesting is that it's okay for the Christian population of the school to participate in the vote and skew it towards a Christian candidate who may not be supported by the majority of the atheist community.
If you're in California you don't get to vote on who will represent New York in the Senate because it's intuitive that only New Yorkers should decide who represents New York. Why does this basic principle of representative democracy suddenly go out the window here?
[QUOTE=itisjuly;47491473]That one dude in blue and white shirt[/QUOTE]
At first I thought that it might be photoshopped, but there really is some white dude in a flanel shirt there. He's in all of them:
[url]https://www.google.com/search?q=saudi+arabian+women%27s+rights+conference&espv=2&biw=1615&bih=963&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=I-4mVZ2JI8aDsAXbzYGoCQ&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAg[/url]
[QUOTE=ossumsauce;47491486]Well this all kind of depends, doesn't it?
Like, on one hand, i think the role definitely needs to be held by a women, someone who truly understands what it's like to be a women, which a man simply doesn't.
One the other hand... Yeah, i mean he was elected. I mean that all depends on whether or not men were allowed to vote(considering the role doesn't effect men at all, men shouldnt be allowed to vote). If men were allowed to vote, i agree that him being elected is pretty much null and void. It's like a non-US citizen voting to elect someone from their country to be POTUS.
Then there's the fact that, well, the protesters were really fucking aggressive and just full of bile. Men are perfectly capable of holding strong feminist values. I certainly do. In fact, having a man in a similar role, saying and doing the right things would bring a lot of positive male attention to the modern feminist movement. Men pay attention to other men more than they pay attention to women, that's the whole point around feminism, right? So it would make sense to use that to your advantage and get more shit done. Make him a figurehead.[/QUOTE]
this whole thread has been a wild ride of "men can be feminist too!" when the point is not that he holds feminists values, but is literally a figurehead that speaks on behalf of the women of the school and all that. Sounds like it should be headed by a woman, which the school even had a rule to ensure that fact previously. It's just a weird irony if you consider the idea that a man takes power on behalf of women, so he can speak for them being underrepresented or overshadowed compared to male equivalents. I really hope people read enough of the article to know the guy was sincere and had the best of intentions, but it's a rough one to just take at face value.
I know some people out there would totally have fun toying with the system just to make a point or troll people about it (I recall a white dude at my high school getting a scholarship through the black student alliance or whatever because he wanted to be a pissant about discrimination), and a democratic school election is hardly well founded when you just kind of get signatures or tell groups of people to vote or sign a petition with vague pretenses. To any outside view you have to admit the situation could reek of intentional firestarting from both ends of the fuse
Good thing our country doesn't operate like a university, or Obama would have been harassed out of office in his first year.
[QUOTE=proboardslol;47491456]You know you guys say that this is bullshit, but if I show you a picture of this saudi arabian women's rights conference full of men:
-image-
you say "that's bullshit; how can women really be enfranchised when their advocates are nothing but men?"[/QUOTE]
I'm not quite sure what you're trying to accomplish, bringing in one of the most notorious countries when it comes to women's rights or equality in general.
Seriously, in the [url=http://reports.weforum.org/global-gender-gap-report-2014/rankings/]Global Gender Gap Report for 2014[/url], Saudi Arabia is the 13th worst country. Out of 142 countries.
What exactly are you trying to say? I'm legitimately curious - I can't tell what side you're trying to argue, if any at all.
I have never seen anything which [B][I]demands[/I][/B] that you identify as something as much as feminism does. Because a person believes in some core ideals which are almost essential to not being an asshole means they have to be put under a label which leads to people pulling some, often insane, assumptions about you, or even demanding you follow their own warped ideal.
I don't even know some of the people who want to say who and what I am. Shit, when's the last time anyone here had someone demand they identify as a gamer?
My final opinion on this is that this was a far bigger issue than it needed to be. I'm fairly sure Ritchie was sincere, but the way he was portrayed by word of mouth to spread the petition was blatantly unfair. Going through the petition comments, twitter, some feminist news sites, the view that Ritchie was sincere is very unpopular even if he truly did no wrong. Shit sucks for all parties involved, but I don't think anyone really gave a crap about his character, more of the fact that he is not a woman. I can understand this, but I think he got a lot of stuff he didn't deserve. I know a bunch of student officers who would be mortified if things like this were said about them.
[QUOTE=catbarf;47489439]It's really not unreasonable for women to want to be represented by a woman. The fault is on the school for not putting it in the job description in the first place.[/QUOTE]
I'd rather be represented by the right individual. The sex of the same is of no matter to me.
[QUOTE=dai;47491633]this whole thread has been a wild ride of "men can be feminist too!" when the point is not that he holds feminists values, but is literally a figurehead that speaks on behalf of the women of the school and all that. Sounds like it should be headed by a woman, which the school even had a rule to ensure that fact previously. It's just a weird irony if you consider the idea that a man takes power on behalf of women, so he can speak for them. I really hope people read enough of the article to know the guy was sincere and had the best of intentions.
I know some people out there would totally have fun toying with the system just to make a point or troll people about it (I recall a white dude at my high school getting a scholarship through the black student alliance or whatever because he wanted to be a pissant about discrimination), and a democratic school election is hardly well founded when you just kind of get signatures or tell groups of people to vote or sign a petition with vague pretenses. To any outside view you have to admit the situation could reek of intentional firestarting from both ends of the fuse[/QUOTE]
My first sentence was literally that the position needed to be held by a women, though. I just said there was definitely a place in feminism for men to speak out as well.
just because someone is democratically elected doesn't mean that they are representative of the electorate. I'd imagine that uni elections have awful turnouts, and this could have happened through that dude going to as many of his male friends as possible and telling them to vote for him - so that a clear majority of votes cast for women's officer came from males. For a male candidate.
But seriously, that position should go by convention to a female candidate. Obviously a man can be representative of women, but that sends an awful message as men and women are still not equal in society. Women may find it difficult to approach the women's officer about problems they may have, because the women's officer is a man. Not all women would have first hand experience with discrimination on the basis that they are women, but this dude certainly wouldn't.
[editline]10th April 2015[/editline]
I suppose we live in a country where the Minister for Women is Tony Abbott though.
[QUOTE=ossumsauce;47491915]My first sentence was literally that the position needed to be held by a women, though. I just said there was definitely a place in feminism for men to speak out as well.[/QUOTE]
I meant to be backing up that point and expanding on how people are focusing on the whole 'he can be a feminist' thing without acknowledging the context of the situation, yeah. Your post ended however in suggesting that it'd be totally cool to keep the dude there because men inherently don't pay as much attention to women. For all the claims about actions and attitudes in the situation being sexist, I think this is a great example to look at regarding ~the patriarchy~ and how it sets a weird balance of expectations and standards, both in how people actually act, and how we just assume things will be handled or recieved by virtue of what they are
[QUOTE=Craigewan;47491081]Egalitarian. But so help you god if you use it, because apparently it cheapens the feminist struggle or some shit like that.[/QUOTE]
It doesn't cheapen the feminist struggle, it's just mostly pointless because egalitarianism and feminism don't really deal with the same aspects of society. Even if they did, there is a wide gulf between the theoretical application of egalitarianism towards the legal and social rights between genders and the practical successes of feminism in the past. The fact of the matter is that you can be an egalitarian and a feminist, either or, or neither. In the same way one can be a gnostic atheist or agnostic atheist. I'd argue though that in terms of practicality, nearly every feminist is by default an egalitarian, though not every egalitarian is necessarily a feminist.
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47490994]you're missing my point. it isn't that being called a feminist is an insult, it may be that in their minds the term "feminist" comes with some points they don't necessarily agree with, and by calling them that, in their mind you are calling them something they are not. perhaps they are not as well educated on the subject matter as they could be, but open hostility isn't a way to get them to learn or change their views[/QUOTE]
Isn't that the fault of people not doing their own research? I think the textbook definition of obnoxious would be establishing yourself as an expert on a subject that you can't even bother taking a few minutes to research.
As for whether one should consider oneself a feminist or not, if you believe in social and legal equality for women, you are by definition a feminist. The problem is this definition is from a period of time when the default state of society was political and economic disenfranchisement for women, which creates an observable gulf in opportunities, freedoms, privileges, and rights between the two genders. This is as opposed to today, when in most western democracies men and women share the same political protections. Economic freedom differs between jurisdictions and observations suffer from a variety of variables that not every study will take into account, but it's impossible to argue that women and men are at the most equal states of being than they have been at any point in human history. Feminism is, like unions, somewhat of a victim of its own success and has been usurped by a vocal minority of extremists who care more about personal gain than equality. In the face of this, the issue lies not with genuine feminists having to go up to bat for people who may share their name but don't agree whatsoever with their message and more to do with the people who are satisfied with their knowledge about gender equality in a historical or contemporary context be dominated by clickbait sensationalist "Tumblr feminism" headlines and scare tactics.
[QUOTE=Sableye;47490160]I've read plenty by prominent feminists and they state unequivocally that society is run by males, thus it is a male society and since our male society is bad by replacing it with a female society it will somehow be better. I don't agree with this because it ignores much of the reality that women can be cruel evil people too, the core language like that is why men cannot ever be accepted in feminism. I support the equality that it stands for but just like all political movements the fundamentals of feminism are junk[/QUOTE]
idk that sounds like a bunch of junk they probably have better reasons for wanting women to have more opportunities to be in a position of power rather than "females are more gentle than males".
I think you've been reading too much tumblr feminism.
[QUOTE=s0beit;47491376]
There is almost no opportunity for the feminist, with opinions that reflect most of societies', to declare themselves a feminist but to dispel the radicals because normal people will never disagree with them.
The radical feminist however has [b]plenty[/b] of opportunities to self-label, self-identify and kick up dust. Their problems with contemporary society which holds that women should be [i]legally[/i] equal is endless. That isn't good enough.[/QUOTE]
p much this, but his whole post is spot on and the best analysis of modern feminism and its internal strife I've seen on these boards.
[QUOTE=The Janitor;47490957]This is fucking sad. Our society is really shitting me up the wall at the moment. Everyone is accusing everyone of else of being a racist, misogynist, anti-semitic or is triggered by the smallest little joke someone says that doesn't even relate to them personally.
I made the mistake of trying to have a discussion about feminism with some feminists before. Holy shit, bad idea.
In minutes I had like 8 woman abusing me on facebook when I said that the guy who beat up christy mack probably didn't need the label "misogynist" because that gets thrown around far too much and it's getting to the point where apparently every man on earth hates and despises woman.
One of the things they tried to say was "You don't what it's like being having men treat you like this, because you're not a woman" yet despite anything I said I was continually wrong and actually abused, so by the end of it I just gave up and turned a discussion into a troll session and got them really riled up.[/QUOTE]
Have you considered what you said was stupid
[QUOTE=catbarf;47491504]Why is the exact proportion important? You're arguing that it's okay for people to have their representative elected by people outside their group, so why does it matter whether 80% of the votes are from an outside group or 50%?
Yes, he could do that job just fine. There's nothing intrinsically about being outside the group that means he couldn't do the job. But that's not the decision of an outsider to make, it's up to the people being represented to decide who best represents their views.
[B]If atheists feel that a particular Christian can best represent them then that's fine. But what you're suggesting is that it's okay for the Christian population of the school to participate in the vote and skew it towards a Christian candidate who may not be supported by the majority of the atheist community.[/B]
If you're in California you don't get to vote on who will represent New York in the Senate because it's intuitive that only New Yorkers should decide who represents New York. Why does this basic principle of representative democracy suddenly go out the window here?[/QUOTE]
No. I'm suggesting that its perfectly fine for a Christian candidate to run in the election, notice the difference. Limiting who the voters are to the people that are being represented is kind of obvious. Limiting the candidate pool for the voters is what I take issue with.
What I don't get here is, if its an election for the women's representative, and he was elected by an electorate consisting solely of women, what is the issue?
If the issue is that the women's representative is a man, elected by men as the majority in the voting population, the problem isn't with who the candidate was, its with the fact that you had men voting for who is representing the women on campus, not that the candidate was a man.
Also this story is pretty sad. I get being quizzical or even a little upset about the election results, and it reminds one of the fact that a US Senate committee on women's rights was entirely staffed by male senators, but the absolute wrong way to go about this was to start a petition asking for the dude to resign. At the very least give him a couple weeks on the job or a statement or something before just assuming that he will do harm to your organization. If it turns out he wasn't the man for the job then you would have easy examples to bring up why he shouldn't be heading the union. The real loss here, and his resignation makes note of it, is the destruction of any possible gain by feminism at the university by having a man standing up beside them. They wasted what could have been a great symbol of unity.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;47492544]It doesn't cheapen the feminist struggle, it's just mostly pointless because egalitarianism and feminism don't really deal with the same aspects of society. Even if they did, there is a wide gulf between the theoretical application of egalitarianism towards the legal and social rights between genders and the practical successes of feminism in the past. The fact of the matter is that you can be an egalitarian and a feminist, either or, or neither. In the same way one can be a gnostic atheist or agnostic atheist. I'd argue though that in terms of practicality, nearly every feminist is by default an egalitarian, though not every egalitarian is necessarily a feminist.
Isn't that the fault of people not doing their own research? I think the textbook definition of obnoxious would be establishing yourself as an expert on a subject that you can't even bother taking a few minutes to research.
As for whether one should consider oneself a feminist or not, if you believe in social and legal equality for women, you are by definition a feminist. The problem is this definition is from a period of time when the default state of society was political and economic disenfranchisement for women, which creates an observable gulf in opportunities, freedoms, privileges, and rights between the two genders. This is as opposed to today, when in most western democracies men and women share the same political protections. Economic freedom differs between jurisdictions and observations suffer from a variety of variables that not every study will take into account, but it's impossible to argue that women and men are at the most equal states of being than they have been at any point in human history. Feminism is, like unions, somewhat of a victim of its own success and has been usurped by a vocal minority of extremists who care more about personal gain than equality. In the face of this, the issue lies not with genuine feminists having to go up to bat for people who may share their name but don't agree whatsoever with their message and more to do with the people who are satisfied with their knowledge about gender equality in a historical or contemporary context be dominated by clickbait sensationalist "Tumblr feminism" headlines and scare tactics.[/QUOTE]
who says they are calling themselves experts on the situation? they may already have done the research on their own and come to the conclusion that their ideals align closer to egalitarianism than it does feminism, but just labelling yourself isn't claiming you're an expert on the deal. they may have gotten to the point where they would prefer to be labeled as egalitarian. as i said before, there's nothing wrong with either telling them or directing them to the real scoop on the egalitarianism/feminism deal, as long as you aren't being aggressive about it. going after people who call themselves egalitarian saying "no you're actually feminist" may not help that person's view of feminism as it might look like you're telling them what they believe, which can be a bit insulting, no matter if it is good or not.
[editline]9th April 2015[/editline]
hexpunk's original post, especially, looked like he was saying "while we believe in the same things, you're still wrong".
[editline]9th April 2015[/editline]
the ideals equivalent of *you're
Can we stop arguing about labeling, it really doesn't matter. Feminists don't have a body defining what one is and neither do Egalitarians, so you could argue semantics till the heat death of the universe.
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47492876]who says they are calling themselves experts on the situation? they may already have done the research on their own and come to the conclusion that their ideals align closer to egalitarianism than it does feminism, but just labelling yourself isn't claiming you're an expert on the deal. they may have gotten to the point where they would prefer to be labeled as egalitarian. as i said before, there's nothing wrong with either telling them or directing them to the real scoop on the egalitarianism/feminism deal, as long as you aren't being aggressive about it. going after people who call themselves egalitarian saying "no you're actually feminist" may not help that person's view of feminism as it might look like you're telling them what they believe, which can be a bit insulting, no matter if it is good or not.
[editline]9th April 2015[/editline]
hexpunk's original post, especially, looked like he was saying "while we believe in the same things, you're still wrong".
[editline]9th April 2015[/editline]
the ideals equivalent of *you're[/QUOTE]
Ok so now I'm confused, what is the limit by which I am allowed to tell someone they are wrong before it becomes insulting and "aggressive"? Because again a lot of posts in this thread are a lot more aggressive than hexpunks and you should rebuke those posters.
As for "directing them to the real scoop" how about people read shit about shit before posting. I don't have a degree in gender studies and I don't have the time to hand-hold people who have demonstrated on multiple occasions that they don't give a shit about having an honest conversation about the merits of feminism. You want to carve out a niche as the SH debate moderator, thats cool, but atleast be even handed. If the first thing someone has to say about gender equality is "But tumblr feminists say ________" then the very bedrock of a decent conversation has already been eroded to the point where it comes down to these stupid semantic games.
[QUOTE=Raidyr;47493057]Ok so now I'm confused, what is the limit by which I am allowed to tell someone they are wrong before it becomes insulting and "aggressive"? Because again a lot of posts in this thread are a lot more aggressive than hexpunks and you should rebuke those posters.
As for "directing them to the real scoop" how about people read shit about shit before posting. I don't have a degree in gender studies and I don't have the time to hand-hold people who have demonstrated on multiple occasions that they don't give a shit about having an honest conversation about the merits of feminism. You want to carve out a niche as the SH debate moderator, thats cool, but atleast be even handed. If the first thing someone has to say about gender equality is "But tumblr feminists say ________" then the very bedrock of a decent conversation has already been eroded to the point where it comes down to these stupid semantic games.[/QUOTE]
you're right, i haven't been very even handed. i've mostly been focusing on this specific debate and as such i have not been paying a fair amount of attention to replies for the main topic, but i can go through the thread again once i am off of work
[QUOTE=Raidyr;47493057]Because again a lot of posts in this thread are a lot more aggressive than hexpunks and you should rebuke those posters. [/QUOTE]
And honestly, I just post aggressively. Hooked up to a constant feed of Mtn Dew and extreme sports channels the entire time.
Don't take aggressive posting from me as anger or anything stupid like that. I just like to swear a lot. Works great as a modifier to the tone of basically anything.
You're also frankly not following the thread correctly if your interpretation of posts puts hexpunk at "going after egalitarians". Like most of these semantic tangents, it's usually someone going after feminism wondering why it's called feminism and not egalitarianism, but it's already been established that he (nor anyone else really) gives a shit about whatever label you apply to yourself.
[QUOTE=Kybalt;47492618]No. I'm suggesting that its perfectly fine for a Christian candidate to run in the election, notice the difference. Limiting who the voters are to the people that are being represented is kind of obvious. Limiting the candidate pool for the voters is what I take issue with.
What I don't get here is, if its an election for the women's representative, and he was elected by an electorate consisting solely of women, what is the issue?
If the issue is that the women's representative is a man, elected by men as the majority in the voting population, [b]the problem isn't with who the candidate was, its with the fact that you had men voting for who is representing the women on campus[/b], not that the candidate was a man.[/QUOTE]
That is [i]literally what I have been saying this entire time[/i]. That is exactly what I was saying when you disagreed with me and called it a ridiculous straw man. You even quoted this:
[quote]If you're looking for someone to represent a particular group, extending the vote beyond that particular group is the wrong way to do it. (...) If the women of the campus truly felt that this guy would best represent them then I'm all for it, but the article gives me the impression that that was not the case. [/quote]
So did you just not read before replying or are you flip-flopping or what?
Feminism, by definition, is the belief that women are equal to men. Anti-male rhetoric is something else.
Now wonder how the internet would react if it was a girl getting rejected taking the position of the male officer at TUU.
This world is stupid.
[QUOTE=Ninja Gnome;47493076]you're right, i haven't been very even handed. i've mostly been focusing on this specific debate and as such i have not been paying a fair amount of attention to replies for the main topic, but i can go through the thread again once i am off of work[/QUOTE]
retracting the latter part of my statement, i'm about to pass the fuck out where i stand so i'm just going to bed when i get home
[editline]9th April 2015[/editline]
for what it is worth, i don't actually disagree with either of you, raidyr and hexpunk, on the base issue, i just disagree with some of the methodology used to try and convince people they're practically the same thing, and was trying to show how being abrasive, despite the intended meaning, can be damaging. i personally believe also, though, that it is really all semantics and anyone getting hung up on it is being distracted from the true issues, myself included.
[QUOTE=catbarf;47493272]That is [i]literally what I have been saying this entire time[/i]. That is exactly what I was saying when you disagreed with me and called it a ridiculous straw man. You even quoted this:
So did you just not read before replying or are you flip-flopping or what?[/QUOTE]
My understanding is that you agree with the school's actions. I don't recall reading anywhere in the article that they restricted the voting to the female population of the school, instead they removed the candidate. Though maybe calling it a ridiculous straw-man was slightly hyperbolic.
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