What's going to be the next big civil rights movement?

[Chewy]

Dogs will get the right to vote.

It's about time too.

[Buck]

Also - Buck - a white american male talking about a lack of glass ceiling is the best things i've read all year.

Wow that's not racist at all.

No it's not at all.

We're talking about civil rights. Males > Females. Whites > Coloured. Westerns > Easterners. Where am I being racist?

I was wondering who you were because I saw a username I'd never seen before. I was confused! I didn't realize your name changed. Hehe.

I'm saying that your comment had racist overtones. Your comment was not based on the actual content of my message, but rather you focused on the race of the person delivering the message. That's what I meant. I'm not talking about your point in general, just that particular comment kinda rubbed me the wrong way.

Also - you're looking for facts in all the wrong places. Instead of looking at hard data of pay between men and women, look at female representation in job roles in various industries to see that there is a massive, massive swing towards males. Then check out media representation of women (hey, you're online, check out the abuse females take online just because they're women). Then say there isn't a glass ceiling. That there aren't any glass walls. Your place of work is predominantly staffed by females, is that not a gender issue?

If you're talking about how certain lines of work tend to have a higher proportion of males or females, then I agree.

Problem is, there's a big difference between stating that the majority of executives are males, and trying to say that a female could not earn her way into that position if she tried, and that furthermore, females need favorable affirmative action laws to force employers to choose females over males so that the playing field will be more "fair". Such laws have already been tried and haven't worked.

And you could say that the media represents a swing toward males, but by contrast, look at our court system. Look at any divorce proceeding, any child custody case involving a divorced couple, any accusation of harassment or abuse that a female makes against a male, or basically any court case involving a female against a male. In all of the above, the courts are MASSIVELY biased toward the female party. Males generally have to fight to even get a fair trial while females pretty much either have to be proven to be abusers or drug addicts to even lose a case.

Why am I bringing this up? To make a point that biases occur on both sides, and in many different guises. Have I ever denied that there could be potential biases on employment against females? Nope, although I have brought up several points that demonstrate that it might not be as severe or widespread as some people may believe. And, as always, I've made my points in opposition to government intervention on the matter.

But there's also biases in the other direction. As far as I'm concerned, reverse discrimination is just as bad as discrimination. The only reason why I voice my opinions louder against reverse discrimination is because normal discrimination is universally recognized as evil (at least in the mainstream where I'm from) so I don't need to emphasize it as much, while many people don't mind or even promote reverse discrimination as a means of solving social problems.

[SortaCreative]

^ Any government shouldn't be getting involved in civil or human rights in general. If the governments of today didn't have to get involved in marriage in order to tax then gay marriage probably wouldn't be an issue. Sure they may not be able to get married in a religious venue but I don't know many religious gay people. Likewise any legislation towards "hiring a certain amount of gender x or y" just gets messy. I agree about the government side.

The problem is cultural and social. It cannot be fixed by government intervention.

I would disagree with your points about a female being able to work up to a (for example) CEO position. Yes it's possible, yes it does happen but it's not equal. There's systemic gender bias in our culture, in almost every culture based on a primal, biological binary that men > women. The old stereotype of men being hunters and women child rearing. Sure that doesn't apply now but that is where a lot of this started. Humans have a way of rationalizing things, controlling things and putting things into a system. Time (as an abstract notion, seconds, mins, hours, days etc), religion (arguably) and social norms are just our ways of controlling things. Some of these things can be very helpful, but some are extremely harmful. Fast forward to today and females are still seen as a second class gender. Is it as widespread as it has been? No. Do we see more action and reaction about this? Yes. But I don't think it's as low scale as you make it out to be. It still is a huge problem.

I keep going back to the same example because it holds the most weight and it is the most relevant right about now. Have you ever been victimized, bullied or attacked because of your gender?

I'd guess no. I could ask the same about race but chances are you may have heard the odd "white" joke or derogatory (hell even attacked! who knows!) remark and think you now how it feels. I'm sorry but you don't and that's not me being a dick. You just don't. If you have experienced these things I know they're horrible, they must have been tough to deal with and i'm not taking away from them on a personal level.

You can talk about human rights and social inequality all you want, you can have opinions, debates, lectures, learn, teach and whatever else about social inequality but you cannot truly understand. That doesn't mean your opinions have no merit, hold no weight or should not be taken seriously.

You are not subject to a systemic, historical and deeply culturally rooted bias. Are we all bullied? Yes, do we all feel some form of empathy, yes! But you can't understand and the problem comes when people that cannot truly understand trivialize things and adopt a "me to attitude".

I'm not saying you cannot talk about bias against males. But that's it's own issue and it shouldn't come up when we're talking about bias against females. It is not one or the other. Social equality is just that, equal. But the reason we think like that and naturally do that is because we are taught to think like that. Look at the damn language we use! Male - Female (Man, Woman). Male is the norm, the root word and female is the other. Reminds me of human and inhumane. Same morphological structure.

Reverse discrimination? Are you having a laugh. Yes bias occurs on both sides but the bias towards females in the judicial system is a product of a patriarchal society, men essentially made those laws. Look at the topics in which you raised there's bias and there's a gender bias against females in them (even though the law favours them). Women need to be looked after, they should look after children, cannot defend themselves, objectified into sexual objects.

Social discrimination is deeply rooted, has a history, has had some form of legal and social standing before being challenged. There have been little or no such cases of historical, culturally ingrained and legal systems of "keeping the white man down" in the Western World.

I pass to you Buckster. Look forward to your response. Good day, sir.

[Westcoastvibes]

You guys went way beyond what I am willing to invest into this topic