Men have pressures of their own, like not being allowed to be seen crying, being seen as weak if overpowered by a woman (which is double-edged sexism really), minor fashion trend expectations associated with color choices, or being expected to do heavy lifting or open jars, but these pale in comparison to the expectations thrown at a woman. We're able to get away with doing far less, and that hasn't felt right to me.
Are you speaking for the whole of society when you say that, or are you speaking just for yourself? If I had to list all of the serious pressures facing men in society, I could think of a few more pressing ones than just being asked to open jars lmfao. Just goes to show that you were brought up differently and/or think differently to the majority. Which doesn't make your opinion invalid, just subjective.
There's plenty of problems that men face, but the strain is not equally hoisted across the board.
How do you explain the fact that in western societies men have significantly higher suicide rates than women? There is a trend for lower educational achievement, with girls outperforming boys in exams in every subject, over 50% of university entrants are women etc. If the "patriarchy" are just cruising along with no pressure wouldn't these trends be the opposite?
Yeah, they do, but the "why" is a larger factor here.
Dude, we've already answered this several times already... BIOLOGY!! Are you saying that anyone who disagrees with you only does so because they are not asking 'why'? Can you seriously not accept that someone can be equally as questioning as you but just arrive at different answers to the same questions?
We'd likely be closer to that if we weren't told what to think is attractive. Women are the potential victims of this system while men are the ones steered into pushing the agenda further.
I don't know about you, but being told what is and isn't attractive feels like a lot less pressure to me than having to doll myself up to not feel like a failure.
But you never explained, oh wise guru, why it is that you and you alone (and perhaps some '70s sociology textbooks) can see through this evil manipulation, whereas the rest of the world can't? Is it your superior intelligence, the way you were brought up... What has made you see the light, and the rest of us so weak and feeble-minded?
In places like Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, women are discouraged from showing any part of their body to those outside the immediate family. Make-up and getting your hair done are heavily frowned upon by men, and yet there are women who actually risk their lives, or at least potential imprisonment, to go to underground beauty salons. They do each other's hair and make-up even though perhaps nobody else will ever see it. Are they victims of manipulation? Or can you acknowledge that they might be getting some pleasure out of it for its own sake?
I know a Muslim girl who wears the veil and is literally obsessed with haircare, doing her hair in different styles etc, even though her husband is the only one who can see it and he really doesn't care. She does it just because she enjoys it, but I suppose you would argue that she can't really be enjoying it and it has to be some kind of mind control, right?
Naturally there's women that thrive in such a system (such as the believed gender advantage in the Porn Industry),
Ahahaha, so us weak and helpless women only have an advantage in the world of porn? Are you for real?
It was snark bait with aspects of mirroring already used arguments through the lens of the other side's aims.
Ah yes, the Whoameye school of argument - "I was trying to sound retarded and you all fell into my trap mwahaha"
Hair or no hair, it's one of many trivial fashion trends in place for reasons guided by the hands of others, the trend rooting from men if you bother to look back far enough.
I went to an exhibition recently about the history of shoes at the V&A in London, it was very interesting. It seemed to me that the history of fashion going back to Medieval times has been about class and status, competitiveness, showing yourself to be above others. Female fashion was an industry driven by women, both in terms of supply and demand from the get-go. High-class women in the middle ages everywhere from China to Egypt to England would wear the most impractical shoes to show that they were above manual labour. It's not so different from today people wanting to wear designer labels to show they have money, taste, class etc. It is a natural human urge to be competitive and want your place in the pecking order above others, and people were wanting this for themselves long before advertising played a part. A lot of what fashion is is about standing out, not fitting in.
If you actually looked into the history of fashion, from the point of view of the fashion itself, you'd find legions of strong women, such as Coco Chanel, who were ahead of their time, prepared to shock and go against established conformity.
When given the option not to, many drop it entirely, let themselves gain a few pounds and wear some frumpier clothing.
Why would anybody want to be unhealthy? That sounds like a symptom of low self esteem or even depression.
We live in a world now where our spending habits affect the advertisements and coupons sent to our door, measuring spending habits to try to gauge life changing milestones such as pregnancy (Target's the common one noted for this) to see how they can hook new blah blah...
Again, you're talking about the world that you live in. How do you explain the fact that women are still interested in fashion in other parts of the world and other time periods?
To grant strictly different requirements onto gender serves to further separate the chances of equality between them, and making those requirements unequal serves to push that even further apart.
Do you think that women have to become more like men to be considered equal? If a woman was wearing a flower printed dress in the boardroom, would you argue she should be wearing a suit? Do you think femininity is inherently weak?
Males and females aren't really that different from one another,
This is the crux of the disagreement, and one which you haven't really addressed at all. Why are men and women not really different? Do you not believe in biology?
It's a construct, completely arbitrary. It's not hardwired into our genetics to see what's gregarious beyond some aspects of the desired gender's proportions (such as how large breasts are a sign of fertility and wide hips show increased birthing potential) and aspects of modeling that typically come from the family.
That's...completely contradicting yourself. How can it be completely arbitrary if you just admitted that the desired gender's proportions have a biological basis? And 'gregarious' doesn't mean what you think it means.
t's not even that they have to simply be attractive physically, no, they also have to conform to a series of stricter standards for some simple acceptance. If they don't, they're seen as some sort of outcast, and if they try too hard, they're seen as "asking for it".
Oh no, I never noticed this, maybe I'm actually an outcast accepted by nobody. Can you tell me what standards I should be conforming to so that I can mend my ways and be integrated back into the rest of society?
