Patriarchy Alive & Functioning

[Butterfly]

Patriarchy Alive & Functioning
The Bilerico Project
Filed by: Guest Blogger
December 27, 2010 4:00 PM


http://www.bilerico.com/2010/12/patriarchy_alive_functioning.php


"Sexism" I define as the overarching system of advantages bestowed on males. It is prejudice and discrimination based on sex, especially against women, transgender, and intersexed people, and is founded on a patriarchal structure of male dominance promoted through individual, institutional, social, and cultural systems.

Throughout history, examples abound of male domination over the rights and lives of women. Men denied women the vote until women fought hard and demanded the rights of political enfranchisement; strictly enforced gender-based social roles mandated without choice that women's only option was to remain in the home to undertake cleaning and childcare duties; women were by far the primary target of harassment, abuse, physical assault, and rape by men; women were locked out of most professions; rules required that women teachers relinquish their jobs after marriage; in fact, the institution of marriage itself was structured on a foundation of male domination with men serving as the so-called "head of the household" and taking on sole ownership of all property thereby taking away these rights from women.

[Miniar]

I can't help but to have a knee-jerk reaction to "I define as... " type starts of any article.
Whenever an author needs to start their writing with personal definitions I cringe because in my experience, it's usually been used to "re-define" words. It's not as bad here as often before, but defining sexism as male advantage "is" still adding another definition to the word.

If you need to re-define words to make your point, your point is clearly weak.
He didn't need to re-define the word, his point is strong, so why do that? :/

[pixiegirl]

Well, I define this as...... sorry, sorry

Mostly because sexism is something that incorporates a lot of things.... or not... or some other things, depending on who you're talking to, so if you're going to reference it you need to set out what exactly YOU mean. Otherwise people get very confused. Then angry. Then a flame war starts. Then everyone forgets what you were talking about in the first place.

[Miniar]

My point wasn't that the author in this case lacked a point, but that re-defining the word was not required to make the point and that, as a practice, actually weakens his article significantly, if anything.

[Miniar]

If you make a good point with poor wording you weaken your point.
I just have a pet peeve, specifically, with people who redefine words in order to make their points.
Like anti-rants which base themselves on redefining whatever they're against to mean something horrible, when it actually doesn't.

In his case, sexism is genuinely really bad and it genuinely targets women, but it doesn't mean that the word means "male advantage". Men are usually at an advantage in regards to sexism, but that still doesn't mean that's what sexism, as a word, means.
Seeing as sexism can, and does, affect men (demonstrably) as well, it weakens his whole following point.

If you are saying something that is true, and is right, but you start it out by saying something that is demonstrably wrong, then it makes the whole of what you're saying seem less true, no matter how true and right the "actual" point is.

It's not just poor writing. It's more than that.

[LordKAT]

I'm with Min, I stopped reading when the definition given wasn't the true definition. If that much isn't right, why waste my time reading an article that is based on a wrong premise.

[tekla]

There are so many strawmen in that piece I'm surprised that the Fire Marshall doesn't shut it down as a code violation.

You know it's possible to hang around Iowa State for more than a decade and not even realize they have an education department.  I'm understanding why now.

[lilacwoman]

I have to say that that piece merely shows how outofdate university staff are and how they so love regurgitating useless crap.

[tekla]

Well most departments of education are pretty much worthless, as are the teachers they graduate, the outcome of which can be read all over the web every day.  Nobody really takes them seriously, which is why they get away with this stuff.