Only women are asked to put trans rights first

Women count for so little, any male’s passing malaise is worth any and all damage to women.

Male worshipping/woman hating is a cult around which “our society” is built. Males are addicted to it, and as in any addiction, it takes more and more of it all the time in order to achieve the same result. Women are programmed to the cult’s beliefs/behaviors like computers.

And there are millions of women who’ve swallowed that, hook, line, and sinker. The misogyny comes wrapped in a cookie labelled Cool Girl. Which is all it takes.

That doesn’t say much for the intelligence of the millions of women. The thing is, it’s women, not men, who have what’s worth having. I’ve experienced the best of what women have to give and it’s paradise. There is (or can be) a mutual nurturing and exchange of energy which is enormously life giving. It’s hard to explain, but it’s very real and it’s nothing you can get from any man. So I don’t know why the hell any women give a hang about whether or not men (or men’s women) think they’re “cool girls”. It’s WOMEN who have the goods, not men.

I’m convinced that within-group differences in any large group of human beings are way, way, way larger than between group differences.

And that if something is biologically determined then no men, or all men, will have the trait. As in, no men get pregnant. Those differences are not a matter of averages.

So I’m convinced that men are not under any compulsory doom to be jerks. They get status from being jerks, so lots of them are, but they don’t actually have to be. You’re right that it’s the framework of our whole stupid society.

For everybody’s sake, women and men, it would be hugely more fun if status stopped being associated with standing on other people’s bare feet in steel-toed boots. Maybe by the time the next millenium rolls around we’ll get it figured out? Or should I work on this wild-eyed optimism?

It took me a couple of readings to figure out what you were talking about and how it relates to what I said, but I think it means you disagree with me. Where to start.

I’m convinced that within-group differences in any large group of human beings are way, way, way larger than between group differences.

I don’t care if within group differences are “way way way” larger than between group differences, I just care about my life and who treats me how in my life. And there are vast differences in how I’ve been treated by the best of men I’ve met vs the best of women, with the best of women being vastly (or “way way way”) superior to the best of men. The worst of women I find are about as bad as the worst of men, so yeah, there’s an overlap.

So I’m convinced that men are not under any compulsory doom to be jerks. They get status from being jerks, so lots of them are, but they don’t actually have to be. You’re right that it’s the framework of our whole stupid society.

I didn’t say they were “jerks” much less “under compulsory doom” to be so. They just do not display any of the life giving behavior/attributes I have experienced at times from women. And even from women these are relatively rare. As to “the framework of our whole stupid society”, where has that come from in the first place? Did it just drop down from the sky? No, it came from men, from their values, from who and what they are.

Sorry I was obscure. I thought, like the Mikado, I was being the very model of a crystal clear whatnot. (Really. This happens to me a lot.)

I guess, yeah, I disagree on some counts. Not on others. A large majority of the crap can be chalked up to men. And I would imagine they started it, as you say.

But they do get a disgraceful amount of help from women (that huge overlap in the two bell curves of nastiness?). The reasons for women’s help varies all the way from being trapped, to hoping to hitch a ride on male status (the largest group, I think), to the Aunts actively enforcing awfulness on other women because men give them benefits. Everybody crushed into the system has some of all three. The balance varies though, and that’s important.

The other thing is I wasn’t trying to say you’d said all men are jerks. I belabor the point about this being a *social* choice and nothing to do with biology because I think it’s so important, not because you didn’t see it. (Of course you do! Practically part of the definition of being a feminist.) Misogynist mythology is always trying to hide behind how rough and tough men “naturally” are, and what-do-you-expect?, and boys will be boys. No. Not true at all. Not one smidge of biological evidence for that.

(Quite the contrary. Fitness (in the evolutionary sense) would be obviously and immediately reduced in any group where the males made it more difficult for the females to produce the next generation in their own group. If somebody wanted to argue from what’s “natural,” it would be natural for men to be helpful and morale-boosting to those around them!)

Anyway, I’m probably getting the point lost in verbiage again. I guess what I’m saying is we have to give each other room to be better, if there’s a chance that’s not just a stupid hope.