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Not at all... I mean it could have been happening for years and not been reported, but all of a sudden it has. It's also just one case, not a huge phenomenon.
You do get a few fucked up people who do that kind of thing... No idea why, it's just pretty nasty... But that still doesn't account for the fact that only 5.7% of rapes reported lead to conviction... Does that mean that over 90% of women are lying? Or that there genuinely isn't enough evidence for over 90% of cases? I mean not even a shred of DNA... A spot of spunk on her (or his) clothing?
Or do women pull out of court cases?
Has anybody read much on this?
That's true to an extent, but in many similar jobs but there is a pay disparity i.e. finance directors vs. HR directors it does go to the advantage of men.
If you trace it back though it all comes from expectations of people. Japan is a very masculine country, Denmark very feminine. You'll find in many countries though boys or girls are conditioned to act or think a certain way. Even from a young age, girls have pink rooms with flowers and fairies and boys have blue rooms with tanks and dinosaurs. Where one breeds compassion the other breeds aggression.
Really if you have both you're set up for life :thumb: whilst feministic approaches have their merit, if you're not willing to best the other guy in a competitive race for a promotion you're not going to win. C'est la vie.
There is definitely usually DNA evidence. Because apparently before DNA first started to be used in court, most men would deny having sex with the girl altogether (presumably looks better to the wife/girlfriend). Since then, the defence has changed to "yeah, we had sex, but she consented," and that's the bit that's hard to prove.
But the job of policing is far more dangerous than primary teaching or nursing, hence the higher pay.
There's plenty of women in high ranking jobs, enough to rule out any credibility in the fantasy of some vast male donspiracy to keep women in the kitchen.
The crux of the matter is this - whether or not men and women are inherently different not only physically but psychologically. If there is inherent psychological difference (as has been asserted by every culture in the history of human existance, and backed up recently by the discoveries of cognitive neuroscience) then it stands to reason that, given the freedom to choose to your occupation, there will be not a 50/50 mix in every field - which has been fervently demanded by feminists for decades.
If it isn't true, and there is no inherent difference between the sexes, then it stands to reason that any diversion from a 50/50 mix in just about every profession - no matter the nature of job - may well be evidence of discrimination.
So what you're saying is that occupations traditionally designated as male or female are both less well paid than 'non-gendered' occupations?
And...?
We discussed this before on another thread a while ago, and I think we established that policing is absolutely nowhere near dangerous enough to warrant danger money based on the stats. I could buy that argument for soldiers getting paid the same as nurses, but not the police.
I read something on it last night, they were the stats. I'm doing research for something like that. Their definitions weren't perfect of course, but they had come up with a chart. If I stumble across it again I'll post the link up, though it's hardly interesting.
Considerable evidence? How do we know all the evidence isn't biased because this conditioning has occurred futher back than human records? By all accounts, if a girl is raised as a boy she will act like a boy. Or at least what we define to be a boy.
Unfortunately its more than just one case and more than just a few fucked up people. The problem is, compared to the drug-rape scares a few years ago, people find it uncomfortable/difficult to talk about for some reason. This was especially true of the Police who were worried about being seen to suggest that the victims were some how at fault for being drunk.
Compare this to the fact that in my Uni's Freshers packs, male students were warned about the dangers of being drunk and becoming the victims of assault. We need in this country to deal with this at all levels and to stop being over-sensitive about accusations of sexism. Women are raped, men are getting away with it, this is a disgrace and is more important than peoples sensitivities.
re conviction rates, there's been quite a few good articles on this in the Guardian's women page and Society sections, it might be worth doing a search.
The 5ish % is from report to conviction - if the CPS won't move a case forward then it's automatically not a conviction.
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/law_order/factcheck+rape+conviction+rates/1038382
I think a lot of it is innate. Cultures don't just appear from nowhere, they have to have a basis. But I certainly think that a society where we seem to value men's skills as more important than women's skills is just an inevitable result of the capitalist system. Women's skills (being careful to stress that I mean skills that women are stereotypically considered better at, be it down to genetics or social conditioning) are valued less simply because they make less money for other people, or at least have in history. I mean seriously, who's ever going to get rich by investing in childcare?
I believe that patriarchy in the form you're talking about is more likely to have come around about he same time that people stopped being nomadic and discovered agriculture. Can't remember where I read that... I think in a book by Judith Orr and one on Latin America.
wow, thats quite thought-provoking, cheers Jim
Well, certainly Japan generally has a more masculine culture than the West, particularly Protestant countries. You're right about that.
This is absolutely untrue. There have been various recorded cases of boys being raised as girls, owing mostly to a condition called cloacal extrophy whereby boys are born without the proper equipment. All of them declared themselves to be boys in early childhood and acted in exactly the same way as normal boys, playing rough and preferring guns to dolls.
Further evidence that difference is innate and not socially constructed can be gleaned from looking at the effects of hormones during early development - girls who are subject to over-production of androgens generally grow up to be tomboys and, in some cases, become lesbians later in life. Then you've got evidence regarding testosterone and oxytocin levels, the levels of which obviously differ between the sexes and can be demonstrated to affect behaviour and attitudes.
I'd generally agree - women's roles have often been denigrated and not given sufficient social value. Much of that is down to the Greek influence on Western culture.
There is no evidence for a pre-historic matriarchy, which is, I think, what you're trying to say...
I am not talking about matriarchy, I am talking about different and/or more equal roles as they both depended on each other. But matriarchal societies have existed.
In this book (I think, though this may have just referred to slavery, will have to double check).
Where are/were these matriarchal societies? - The encylopedia Britannica lists matriarchy as a 'purely theoretical concept'.
Certainly, there have been 'radical anthropologists' who have claimed to have found matriarchal societies but later these have either been discredited or the claims have been withdrawn. And the idea of pre-historic matriarchies, along with the notion of a peaceful human prehistory, are completely unfounded.
It's all in Hofstede, 1998 if you're interested. Here's a nicely constructed map with all the MAS index scores (masculinity / femininity) for different countries across the world.
http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/map/hofstede-masculinity.html
It's worth having a quick read through the book or even just of the summaries, it's very interesting.
"The terms relate to nurturing (feminine) versus assertive (masculine) behaviours and ideals."
Who says that these are exclusively feminine or masculine qualities? This is the problem with positivist definitions of gender....
Unless I've missed something.
You're completely right as far as I've interpreted him.
But rather than taking it to mean literally masculine or feminine, it gives an indication of different countries and where they would fall on the assertive vs nurturing behaviours. Whether you want to call this masculine or feminine or canine and feline or whatever is up to you. It's not that long ago people used to believe 'natives' (black people) were naturally unable to grasp intelligent concepts that us in the developed world could, so you could have done an index based on 'anthropological development' whereby you would take 'native' traits (stupidity, aggression, lack of 'civilisation') at one end and compare them to 'white' traits (intelligence, reasoning, compassion etc.).
Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's kind of the same. Whose to say in 100 years the distinction between masculine and feminine traits won't be confined to the history books, that the only ones who peddle any spiel about there being significant differences would be the mens / womens liberation front or whatever. Having said that, Skive does raise good points about there being some evidence that there are pre-determined male and female traits.
:chin: the intracacies of the argument go over my head unfortunately.
I would agree with you, but I would say you only have to look at how much the 'black' and 'white' definitions of culture (aggression vs. civility) has gone out of fashion and has been roundly condemned in the anthropological literature.
As for the pre-determined nature of male and female traits, this road has been so well-travelled in this forum that I'm kind of hesitant to bring it up (especially now as the original topic has been completely derailed). Suffice to say that the number of scientific journal articles and books I've read of 'gender differences' not being attributed to biological precursors is fairly convincing, as is the ideological basis for the refutation of such claims. I know many biological anthropologists and straight biologists would perhaps refute that, but the differences between 'sex' are far easier to delineate than those between 'gender'.
Which sides are we talking about?