[quote=Jorick]Which is worse, being mocked for being raped or being mocked and for being raped? Men are just mocked, women are mocked (less, to be fair) and also blamed for it in many cases. I'd say treatment of rape victims is actually worse for women. It's a horribly complex issue, but as far as the sexism bits go it's pretty equal due to shittier things in different areas. I'd say female rape victims are treated worse, but male reports of rape are less likely to actually be acted upon whereas nowadays female accusations are so strong that false accusations can sometimes get convictions when the only real evidence is he said, she said type things. Women are raped more, but underage victims of rape (be it statutory or true lack of consent rape) are treated differently: girls are generally treated as horribly abused victims, but male victims of things like teachers taking advantage of them are sickly encouraged and approved of. It's all a big mess of awful crap, but in the end I'd say it's pretty clearly a gender equal issue when all things are considered.[/quote]

Good point, though there have been cases of men being blamed for rape.
Not nearly as often mind you so I'd still give that point over to women. But with comments such as "That Player, he probably asked them too".
However, this is less of a blame in the sense of "She shouldn't of worn that dress" and more simply thinking the male wasn't raped, and simply had willing sex with the girl.
But, that kind of blaming also happens to Girls, with comments such as "She wanted it".

I really hate people at times... -.-

But yea, this is really a too complex issue to be claiming either gender has better or worse.

[quote=Jorick]That's the thing though, for anyone who views females as still getting the short end of the stick (which I do, and I imagine all feminists and many of those who identify as humanists and whatnot also do) it's not just a matter of previous generations, it's a thing that's still happening. It's not calling men today oppressors for the actions of their ancestors, it's calling men today oppressors for the current state of things. It's kind of ridiculous to claim men are all consciously oppressing women though, as there are all sorts of cultural things going on that are never consciously considered that lead to sexism, so it's not like it's just cool to go yell at random guys that they need to stop oppressing women. That's why I say even if this was the intent it's an equal issue at best, though honestly probably weighing in favor of it really being a female issue, because what's worse, men being viewed as oppressors or all the female issues that are caused by male actions and behaviors?

More clarification is certainly needed though, because it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to bring up as a male issue regardless of what meaning is intended.[/quote]

You have a point in that there are a number of female issues going on.
But we can't use the number of cases women face to discredit individual cases of men.

That's the whole point of the tally/list at the bottom. To count the male issues and the female issues.
To rule male issues as not male issues before it even get's to that point because female issues exist simply defeats the purpose of the tally.

[quote=Jorick]Some trace? It's pretty blatant. Claiming that it's heavily outweighed by the draft is ridiculous given the fact that it hasn't been used since 1973. We've been in wars since then, and the combined action in Afghanistan and Iraq most definitely strained the numbers of active military personnel, but even then the draft wasn't used. Prosecution for failure to sign up for the draft hasn't happened since 1986. Until and unless the draft is actually used again, it's effectively dead and not really worth claiming as a major point of sexist bullshit. Honestly, it seems like a joke to me to equate "having to" sign up for the draft (when the only negative repercussion nowadays is that failure to do so might disqualify you from having a job with the federal government), which has affected barely any men at all since 1986, to how men get the shaft in divorce and child custody proceedings, which affect men all the time. The fact that people have to dig for the draft as a second flagship point for how men have it bad is kind of sad, because when you look at the facts surrounding it it's effectively a non-issue with only hypothetical possibilities of bad things to come.

Now, that aside, I'd say the thing about men being expendable in emergencies (which by the way is a holdover from times long ago when maintaining a viable breeding stock was of vital importance, wherein losing half of your population's men would just mean the other guys have to pick up the slack but losing half of your women halved your breeding capabilities) is made up for by them being of greater importance in almost all other circumstances and by the associated negative things for women about them being frail and weak and incapable of saving men and whatnot.[/quote]

I wouldn't rule this as a major issue at the moment.

This issue is more dependent on the time/situation we as people are in at the moment.
The concern is though, with how politic's work a big war that requires draft could break out at any moment.

As a male, you need to spend your entire life living, with the risk that the government could at any point drag you away and force you to kill or be killed if the situation ever arrived.
That fact that's a constant (though unlikely) danger for males is why I still list it as a valid issue and not simply grasping at straws.

As for the expendable men being countered by women being more frail?
I use the same response I said early of you can't rule male issues as not male issues before it reaches the tally because women issues also exist.
You're right in that women being frail and less capable probably does balance it out, but that's a call to make at the tally and not before hand.

[quote=Jorick]I'd revise it to be 3 male specific issues, 4 gender equal, and 1 for women. The changes I'd make are removal of the draft altogether and moving the expendable men thing to the neutral category.

But yeah, this is by no means an all-inclusive list, and trying to claim who has it worse just based on a listing of concrete issues would be foolish anyway.[/quote]

I'd rule it as 5 Male/3 Equal/2 Women

Keeping the Drafts as a male issue (But a minor one depending on the times), and keeping the Expendable men as a male issue. But also noting the women being seen as weaker/more vulnerable and adding that as another women issue of it's own.

But I do agree, making an overall ruling based off such a list would be foolish.

[quote=Jorick]I think there would be more harm done by trying to force a name change than by leaving it and having to make a clarification once in a while.

Also, I think those feminazi types are more to do with people declaring humanism and so forth instead of feminism than any naming issues. The name thing is minor, but the awful parts of the group that are after female dominance rather than equality is a huge reason for why people distance themselves from feminism. I am an example of this in action.[/quote]

That makes two of us examples of the action then. :P

[quote=Jorick]First wave feminism and humanism are basically the same thing, so yeah, they could be. Feminism is far better known in general culture though, so odds are heavy than any non-vocal supporter of equality will call themselves a feminist rather than a humanist.[/quote]

That's more an issue of general awareness of the options out there though.
How many of those quiet feminists do you think would remain feminists if they were all aware of the Humanist movement?

[quote=Jorick]Right, I know there are things that wouldn't be affected by just dealing with female gender roles, that's why I prefer the simultaneous approach. What I was getting at is that there's already all sorts of groundwork laid for dealing with female gender role stuff courtesy of feminism, all kinds of momentum for that side of things while male issues are rarely even acknowledged, so there's an argument to be made that it'd be more efficient to just focus on one problem before dealing with the other.

The fact that humans are a sexually dimorphic species is exactly why I am doubtful that gender roles will ever go away completely. So long as there are differences, there will be people who discriminate based on those differences. That's just how the human mind works. The best we can do is minimize the impact, not eradicate it. At least that's how I see it with my cynical world view.[/quote]

Humanity has over 6 billion people, we're capable of dividing up effort and multi-tasking. :P

We can have people deal with the laid out and easier to carry out female issues while still having people work on the male issues.

In total agreement for the dimorphic point though. We still have examples of that with black and asian racism, people who still follow Nazi tradtion's and beliefs etc.
But in a species over 6 billion big a few bad eggs are bound to happen, making every single person accepting of everyone is a pointless effort.
As long as the rules/laws we live by and the culture that influences us is not being sexist, racist, homophobic etc then that's the best we can do and focus on.

[quote=Jorick]I already did a little of that in what I said about the draft being a non-issue. I can go for more though, sure. The child custody and divorce thing is the one and only area that I actually weigh as being equal to the major female issues, and they've got three big ticket items as far as I'm concerned: pay gap [note: see next quote response section for a bit of clarification on this one, and why I downgrade it to a minor issue after further research, and in the future I'll probably refer to this realm of issues as employment issues since "pay gap" actually doesn't describe it well, not rewriting things because fuck it, let people see my mistakes], bodily autonomy, and the clusterfuck of media things. That alone is a three [note: two with the correction] to one difference on major things. Now, for the lesser things, let's take a look at what we've agreed are male only issues.[/quote]

So we basically got Child Custody Rights VS Bodily Rights and Media?

Fair enough, I can agree with this one.

[quote=Jorick]The genital mutilation thing, eh, big fucking whoop? Circumcision is gross and weird, sure, but what does it do exactly? From everything I've read on the subject, it lessens sexual pleasure and sensitivity, but it's also cleaner and makes it so some problems with foreskin aren't an issue. Aesthetics is a wash, people tend to prefer circumcised versus uncut based on personal experiences and what they were first made aware of and such. It doesn't do any real lasting harm to the guy, it doesn't inhibit or prevent sexual activity (like a lot of female genital mutilation does), it just makes it feel slightly to moderately less good (which is a wholly subjective thing anyway, since there's no objective way to measure pleasure) and potentially solves some problems. This is nowhere near as big a problem as things like the pay gap, and if you look at it as a part of the broader picture of sexual things it's dwarfed by some of the crap women face in that area. The genital mutilation thing is a very minor issue in the grand scheme of things, and honestly it's more of a strange religious problem than it is a sexist problem. Circumcisions don't happen out of malice for men, they happen because old books said it should and then it became a tradition. In the first world it's a male only problem, sure, but it's a really small one.[/quote]

Circumcision VS Pay Gap

Pay Gap I'll address later where you talked about the study you were using.

As for Circumcision, we're in agreement in that it is an issue caused by religion.
But honestly I'd be ruling this one category up against women bodily rights because it's essentially the same battle under a different light.

Women being told what they can and cannot do with their bodies when pregnant.
Men having people make choices for them about what to do with their body before they're even old enough to resist.

From a Health Concern standpoint women have it worse in this by far.
But from a standpoint of pure control over your bodily rights, I'd rule men have it worse cause it's made for them when they have no way to stop it.
If a woman truly is against it they are at least in their power to move somewhere it is allowed (Not a great defense, but it is at least more control over the situation than men with circumcision are granted).

However, I will grant there is a way shown to recover from the effects of circumcision.
The method being you take a specific kind of metal weight (I forget what it's called) and warp your penis skin around it.
The idea is that it slowly stretches the skin causing it to grow, do it long enough and you're penis is in it's natural state again.

As for people preferring the circumcised penis look, you can credit largely because of the religious influence raising people to basically prefer it.
Because that's the state that you're 'supposed' to be at, and it's what media will show more often.
Where basically people are being raised to dislike and shy away from our natural bodies features.
If you grow up and on your own free will decide to alter your body and you don't like _________ that's fine and totally in your rights.
But it should not be because society told you to.

[quote=Jorick]For prison sentencing, the level of sexist bullshit present in it is heavily mitigated by those stats of offense and recidivism rates I brought up. You can't just call it an anti-male thing when there are clear and logical reasons for why it is this way, and why logically women would have harsher sentencing if they instead had the higher rates. There's also the fact that the United States justice system is ridiculously backwards in the first place and in need of major reform just to make it not brokenly stupid, so trying to point to bad things in this area as proof of wider badness is like saying the US military being backwards and stupid about things is proof of society at large being backwards and stupid in the same ways; they're largely separate areas governed by very different rules, so you can't really look at them and judge them in the same way as you'd look at social interactions. This is also a minor issue that gets nowhere near the importance of the big ones, though certainly a more important one than the genital mutilation thing.[/quote]

You have a point in that it's something based on fact, and not a matter of people trying to make women better than men.
But still a male issue none the less. May it be ruled more or just as important as genital mutilation probably depends on how much value you put in Prison sentences vs Bodily Rights.

[quote=Jorick]-Snip of saying there are more woman issues than males-[/quote]

If I think of more issues against men I'll be sure to bring them up here.
But with the issues we currently have addressed here what you say would be correct.

[quote=Jorick]Well now, you've seen the notes I made to pay gap stuff in the previous section, so here comes a somewhat embarrassing correction. Those numbers I was quoting? Yeah, thought they were from a legit study, got it from a solid site, but I traced it back and found out that it came from a heavily biased feminist organization and it didn't have very good documentation on methodology. That might've still flown sort of, if not for the fact that I then found very contradictory information when I went to find legit data. Turns out childless women under the age of 30 actually make an average of 8% more than their male counterparts, but it does actually swap back the other way after 30 even if the women remain childless. The overall pay difference is indeed about 20% as I said before, so there's that, but I couldn't find any solid data for pay differences between childless women and mothers in the same field with the same level of experience and education. Also, it's not universally in favor of men: the Bureau of Labor Statistics looked at a bunch of different fields in 2009 and found that women made more money in jobs falling under the headings of "bakers," "teacher assistants," "dining room and cafeteria attendants and bartender helpers," and "other life, physical, and social science technicians," whatever the hell that means. That was 4 out of 108 occupations looked at but hey, some advantageous areas are better than none. I also found some things giving more detailed breakdowns of how pregnancy and motherhood might explain a large segment of the pay gap, which was already a blatantly obvious thing, but I'll be giving them a read to see the details bits on how they estimate the effect this stuff has on a woman's pay. There's an argument to make about how taking time off of work to be with kids is largely due to gender role things expecting women to always be the one there for the kids, and they should put their children above all else while men are expected to focus on work, but there's still a large choice aspect going on there since working women and stay at home dads are becoming more and more acceptable, so I can't really count this as just another problem caused by gender roles.

So yeah, I'm downgrading the pay gap thing from a major to minor issue as I see them. It's not as bad as I thought, there are areas where women truly have advantages, but it's still a problem area. It's just no longer as important imo as bodily autonomy and the media clusterfuck, so downgrade ahoy. Thanks for questioning this and pushing me to go do better research Gwazi. Doesn't change the overall picture for me, but I like being as accurate as possible and this helps.[/quote]

So essentially. younger childless women are paid more then men, but older women are paid less than men?
Personally though, until I see a legit study showing the pay differences I'm going to be operating by the explanation of that the original "Pay Gap" is a result of parental and maternity leave of mothers more often than fathers, and the fact that women tend to pick less paying jobs then men tend to do. Simply a natural result/by-product of other Gender issues going on, not any kind of conscious discrimination against women. An issue that in theory doesn't need and should not be countered and handled on it's own. But rather something that should fix itself over time as other gender issues are resolved. If it is something that get's addressed separately all you'll have is an issue of women being paid even more then men once the other gender issues are solved.

You're welcome for pushing it. That claim specifically in gender equality is something I've learned to approach with caution and suspicious cause without fail every claim of such a wage gap existing has been proven to be false and/or from a bias source.

[quote=Jorick]I think I already covered this stuff when I responded to a rape thing earlier in this post. The point about it differing by area is important though, definitely has some merit to it. Women who accuse "important" people of rape are more likely to be mocked and disbelieved than those who accuse some average schmuck of rape. The thing about raping men being a myth in some places is also very important, and in some states and countries the laws on the books define rape in ways such that legally it isn't rape if done to a male, such as saying rape is the forcible penetration of the vagina. The legal side of things is improving slowly, but the perception and reaction to rape accusations is still pretty awful and hasn't gotten much better in the past decade, and that's pretty shitty.[/quote]

Technically you can rule that when a woman rapes a man that she forcefully uses the mans dick to penetrate her vagina.
Therefore still a forcible penetration of the vagina and can be legally claimed to be rape. :P

We're in agreement here with that it's an awful situation still being worked on, and it is easier to accuse an average person for being a rapist than it is to accuse an 'Important' person.

[quote=Jorick]Well, you should've already read what I had to say on bodily autonomy, so whether or not you agreed with that you should have an idea of what the argument is for why it is indeed a female issue above all else. Pro-life attacks on bodily autonomy aren't really sexism (it's not about gender and they'd probably say the same things if men could get pregnant too), and they aren't exactly discrimination against women for being women, and it's good to make the distinction that it's not a sexism-based thing, but it nonetheless a major issue for women that isn't an issue for men. Explain it away with sexual dimorphism all you like, the fact remains that female bodily autonomy is under attack while the sovereignty of male bodily autonomy isn't even questioned. Aiming for gender equality isn't about dealing only with the differences that stem from sexism, it's about dealing with all gender-based issues regardless of what they stem from.

Oh, and that thing you said about it being a women's rights versus men's rights thing, those two things needn't be in opposition for an issue to fall under one or the other. Abortion and thus female bodily autonomy is a women's rights issue that has literally nothing to do with men's rights. And the parent versus child rights thing... Actually, nah, that'd be getting into abortion debate territory. I'll take Protagonist's lead and not go there.
[/quote]

I read it, and I've debated this topic tons on the atheist group I've mentioned in the religion thread.
So I've heard almost every argument in the book, argument's that have definitely caused me to re-look my stance on Abortion.
The only thing really keeping me Pro-Life at this point is claiming a child before birth isn't a life.

That's a debate for another topic though.
As for Abortion and Gender rights though?
Although I personally view it as a child vs parent issue rather than a gender issue, it is still a topic which I grant does count as an example of a gender issue for women.

[quote=Dark Wind]
Man, I will respond to you Magnum and you Zaresto… But Jorick did such a good job of summing up most of my beliefs. Give me a moment to look at these things carefully.
[/quote]

No problem. These posts are getting pretty long to read and reply to anyways. :P