Hypocrisy

This week I read the following comments. I'm paraphrasing, but maintaining the general idea:
[On the topic of Ukraine and "women and children first"]
Men should risk their lives before women, because they stand to gain more from civilized society. It's only right that those with advantages should defend those advantages more eagerly.
[On the topic of whether a feminist should allow a man to pay for a date]
If the price of his privilege is to buy dinner and take me home, that's a bargain.

Now, I wonder if the women who say this realize what they're saying.

In case you're not up to date on feminist rhetoric, these women believe in a vague boogeyman called "the patriarchy" that oppresses women in various ways. Now, it is true that women exercise different amounts of power than men. However, feminist rhetoric affirms that this is something artificial that could be fixed, rather than the consequence of inherent behavioral differences between the genders that result in people making different choices all on their own.

If someone who believes in the patriarchy makes either of the above statements -- specifically, if they refer to the transactional nature between male privileges and male duties -- what they're doing is legitimizing the power differential. It's right that men have privileges that women don't, because they also have duties that women don't. But apparently, not; apparently for these women, gender inequality is bad, except for those cases where it benefits them. That thing Ghandi almost but not quite said, "be the change you want to see in the world"? Pfft. Of course he'd say that, being a man.

By the way, I just finished listening to an interview with the woman who wrote the article I got that second quote from, and I only wish feminism had more spokespeople like her, so everyone would see how vacuous and divorced from reality its rhetoric is. I'd link to it, but it's in Spanish, so it wouldn't be much use.
dang man, get woke or something :P
you have to realize that its ok to be anti-unpopular things, and not ok to be anti-popular things. That is what its all about.
basically, you can be pro any race but white, pro any religion that isnt christian, pro any gender that isnt straight, pro any freedoms except owning guns or christian religion related, and so on.

Feminism has become its own subset of that where you can't look at a woman 'that way' as a man but its OK for a woman to show off her body to advertise beer or whatever. You can't force them out of the military but they don't want to be enrolled in the draft. And so on.. Much of feminism is tied to abortion, which is seen as a constitutional right even though it is not enumerated as such -- many people recently compared the laws attacking abortion to to the laws right to bear arms (this is because the recent anti-abortion laws use the tactics used by anti-gun laws, to whittle at the 'right' by whatever can be gotten away with on the edges), one of which is enumerated and protected, and one of which is the result of a fragile court ruling.

the common theme here is that if it benefits the 'as seen' underdog then its ok, and if it benefits the 'as seen' majority then it is not ok. What you are calling unfair or confusing is simply liberalism / wokeism which seeks not equality and fairness, which is what should be done, but actual punishment for the historic majority and actual bonuses to the historic minorities. To accomplish this, anyone who stands in the way is labeled a bigot and brought down via mob rule tactics such as doxing, canceling, etc.

I don't normally like to go off on politics but that is what it is right now and has been for 20 + years. I am dead center on this stuff... a live and let live libertarian ... and both sides are full of rabid morons. If we treated everyone equally and favored freedom over restriction, both sides would have more wins than losses, but the rabid politics have people up in arms over every little loss and no celebration for big wins, so that isn't even on the table.

Of course this is the USA viewpoint, but its much the same (apart from the RKBA) across most of the western world and spilling over in places even in the rest of the world. In many cases its like the genie with the twisted wishes where you get what you asked for, only is bad.. people seem to want socialism when its spun to sound good, forgetting the costs...
Last edited on
The Monkey's Paw - “Be careful what you wish for, you may receive it.” – Anonymous

https://www.kyrene.org/cms/lib/AZ01001083/Centricity/Domain/2259/The%20Monkeys%20Paw%20-%20text.pdf
The terms liberal, conservative, progressive, socialist, social liberal, radical, reactionary, and fascist at one time were all well-defined.

When these words were well defined it was possible to have intelligent discussion. I’m sad to say it is not possible to have an intelligent discussion anymore because you don’t know what a person means when they throw these words around.
There isn't much to say here, other than most feminists are wrong about a lot of things. A lot of losers just like to lean into their misery and make believe they're actually the victim of somthing, so they make things up like "the patriach" or "white priviledge".

In reality it's a little more complicated.
Maybe you don’t believe in “White Privilege”, obviously white-trailer-trash has no privilege.

Dominant Culture does exists. When I was in the service I got in a lot trouble, I hurt someone in a fight very badly. They were going to discharge me. I was placed on the goon-squad just waiting for my discharge.

I called my father and told him I was coming home.

He said, “I’ll take care of it.”

He made some phone calls. The next day my First-shirt called me in his office put me at ease, and told me, “sometimes good boys make mistakes, don’t worry about it, it’s been taken care of.” They gave me an article 15 and fined my 75 dollars.

That didn’t happen to everyone, that’s a benefit minorities and white-trash, never receive. They don’t get as many second chances.
That has nothing to do with being a minority or being white trash, though. It's about having clout.

The fallacy of "white privilege" is the assumption that it has something to do with race. People are born into it, for the most part, and it certainly has a lot of overlap with race, because the primary predictor of your social status in adulthood is your parents' social status, and that's also true of race. But if white privilege was real it should apply universally in the US (it doesn't) and internationally (even less so).

Let's call things what they are. People with influence are going to use that influence to help their family and friends. It takes a serious amount of oversight to prevent that sort of corruption from creeping in, but even then, that doesn't translate to "black people have an easier time in the military". It's just that children from military families don't get any free passes.
Exactly, its really wealth privilege, not white privilege. The two are related, tangentially, though less each decade. I saw a lot of this at my high school, which today is 30/60K $USD for a year depending on if you live there or drive up. The minorities there were just as able to hand wave their way out of trouble as anyone else ... people in power figure its worth letting a kid get away with a minor crime in hopes they someday are a judge/politician/whatever and can remember your kindness...
I prefer the term “Dominant Culture” to “White”.

Race is a social-construct that changes with place and culture.

My grandfather would never eat with an Italian, he considered them lazy, predisposed to criminal behavior, and definitely not “white”.

That they would be considered “white” in US culture today would be difficult for him to grasp.
I prefer the term “Dominant Culture” to “White”.
There's no need to invent new terms. The word is "in-group". People in the in-group look out for each other over people in the out-group.

Race is a social-construct that changes with place and culture.
Sorry to use such a tired formulation, but: that depends on what you mean by "race".

The idea that one person or another might have about what a "white person" is is certainly as arbitrary as the delineation between red and orange. The same is also true of the idea of species, incidentally. In fact, I recall the controversial case of one biologist who goes around "speciating" snakes which are all basically the same just to say he's discovered so many species of snakes.
That said, you can take the genomes of all living black bears, "average" them out, and the result will not be the same you'd get if you did it for brown bears. Likewise you could do the same for Italians, French people, and Spaniards, and you'd find not only that they're all slightly different, but you might also find that some more alike than others (if I had to guess I'd say Spaniards are more closely related to the French than to Italians, purely going by geography).

Some people have argued that these differences are not enough to call them races, but the fact is that words don't have intrinsic meaning. Take the example I gave above for the snakes. There's a definition for "species", but even with that there's argument about which groups are new species and which aren't. Why would it be any different for race, when that word has no formal definition.

So yes, "white person", "black person", "asian person" don't mean anything intrisically, but some people take that a step further to say that there are no races (i.e. at the very least physically and genetically distinguishable people), which is obviously not true.

My grandfather would never eat with an Italian, he considered them lazy, predisposed to criminal behavior, and definitely not “white”.

That they would be considered “white” in US culture today would be difficult for him to grasp.
It would not surprise me if your grandfather could name specific incidents that were the genesis of that idea, that made him distrust Italians more than the other immigrants in the US at the time. It would also not surprise me if othering them like that made it easier for him to justify that treatment to himself.
helios said
There's no need to invent new terms. The word is "in-group". People in the in-group look out for each other over people in the out-group.


It's true: you can actually observe the same behavior in many terrestrial mammals that organize themselves in social groups. The most noted instance of this behavior was seen on Planet Earth when they documented Macaques demonstrating it. In the Winter the Macaques separated themselves into two distinct groups: those that got to bath in the hot spring and those that did not. There was a clear power center as well.

Humans are basically just animals when you get right down to it.
I didn’t invent the phrase “dominant culture”, it has been in use at least a 100 years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_culture

My real problem with the use of “white” isn’t that it changes, it’s that it changes so frequently.

Why my grandfather held his racial opinions wasn’t the reason for the example. I meant to demonstrate that “white” doesn’t mean today what it meant in the recent past, and that there isn’t an agreed on definition.

I believe that racism is not a significant problem in our society. That the real problem is the power structures that oppress. In other words if my grandfather couldn’t oppress who cares what he thinks.

Some people don’t like me because of my race, I don’t care because I’m part of the dominant culture and they have limited power to oppress me.

Social-constructs like race exists, but it is not scientific, it’s arbitrary and dependent on time, place, and culture.

I had a roommate once who was Persian, who was very offended when I called him Arab.

I said, “I can’t tell the difference between Persian and Arab.”

He said, “My god they’re so ugly.”

I grew up in the States, here we don’t need to delineate between Arab and Persian, but in Iran these racial distinctions are very important. Place and culture are what determine a racial classification.

To me dominant culture is more useful than white because it can be used in cultures where white doesn’t mean a thing. I also believe it is probable that here, where I live, white may eventually not mean dominant culture. If we keep adding people of color to the club we will need a better word than white.
People associate white privilege with privilege that actually comes about from being the majority of the population.

I like a lot of Jordan Peterson's views on these subjects. I find myself agreeing with him a lot on these social issues, but then he suddenly goes off the rails - like when speaking about God.
I believe that racism is not a significant problem in our society. That the real problem is the power structures that oppress. In other words if my grandfather couldn’t oppress who cares what he thinks.
The ability to exclude is inherent in the ability to associate ourselves with each other. As long as we can form groups, the people in those groups will be able to oppress in some way the people not in those groups. It's never going away.
Topic archived. No new replies allowed.