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I don't see any reason why he should not have stood for election. I get that women uncomfortable with men generally for whatever reason would feel uncomfortable, solely on the basis of his gender, approaching him. But I thought that kind of sexist prejudice was the problem to begin with.

 Manchu wrote:
I don't see any reason why he should not have stood for election. I get that women uncomfortable with men generally for whatever reason would feel uncomfortable, solely on the basis of his gender, solely on the basis of his gender. But I thought that kind of sexist prejudice was the problem to begin with.

It would appear that to certain individuals it wholly depends on who is suffering the prejudice.

I generally support gender equality by infantilizing one gender while stoking fears of the other, it's empowering or something.

 Crablezworth wrote:
it's empowering or something.

I'm sure it empowers someone, and maybe even some of them are women.

 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
It would appear that to certain individuals it wholly depends on who is suffering the prejudice.

The problem isn't sexism. It's that men are sexist. (Again, that's not sexist because it is a generalization about men. And even if it was sexist, as a man, I would only be proving my point.)

You know what? I say good on them for requiring the women's officer to be female. If you're going to have a position representing women, it should be filled by a woman. Now if the position was a "student's officer", that would be different. Out of curiousity, who was elected to be the men's officer?

 Torga_DW wrote:
Out of curiousity, who was elected to be the men's officer?

I always knew you were a misogynist

 Manchu wrote:
I don't see any reason why he should not have stood for election. I get that women uncomfortable with men generally for whatever reason would feel uncomfortable, solely on the basis of his gender, solely on the basis of his gender. But I thought that kind of sexist prejudice was the problem to begin with.

The "problem to begin with"? Do you mean the problem that the 'Women's Officer' position exists to combat? To ensure that the female campus population have a voice the is specifically theirs on the Student Council? Someone who can understand, relay & represent issues pertaining specifically to that population? Presumably, 'being approachable by women' would be a necessary part of that job description.

 Crablezworth wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
Out of curiousity, who was elected to be the men's officer?

I always knew you were a misogynist

Hahaha. I'd rather go with misanthrope, but it just doesn't have the same impact as being called a misogynist.

This reminds me of a good article I read https://medium.com/@aristoNYC/social-justice-bullies-the-authoritarianism-of-millennial-social-justice-6bdb5ad3c9d3 .

 Torga_DW wrote:
You know what? I say good on them for requiring the women's officer to be female. If you're going to have a position representing women, it should be filled by a woman. Now if the position was a "student's officer", that would be different. Out of curiousity, who was elected to be the men's officer?

I hear that!
I know for a fact the PR position was filled by someone who had worked in marketing , the Vice president was a VP of a company and the president was none other than Bill Clinton.

It's a fething complete load of tosh that a representative of a sector/community needs to be of that sector/community. If that was the case we would not have career politicians like these feth sticks on the student council learning how to pull swifties using the media from a young age.

Men can't represent women and womens issues? I see why, because women are just a monolith that all has the same views and ideas. This is why men can't get it. Makes complete sense. BASTARDS!

The more I think about this the more angry I get. I expect by the end of the day my posts will be completely unintelligable [so angry i can't be fethed spelling write] (more?)




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 Crablezworth wrote:
This reminds me of a good article I read https://medium.com/@aristoNYC/social-justice-bullies-the-authoritarianism-of-millennial-social-justice-6bdb5ad3c9d3 .

I'm quite enjoying that article. I think it's soothing my inernet rage.

Horseshoe theory, back in my day when we were hunting mammoths as opposed to Frazs' dinosaurs we were taught the political circle theory that both ends of the spectrum at extremes end up as totalitarianism.

 Bullockist wrote:

 Crablezworth wrote:
This reminds me of a good article I read https://medium.com/@aristoNYC/social-justice-bullies-the-authoritarianism-of-millennial-social-justice-6bdb5ad3c9d3 .

I'm quite enjoying that article. I think it's soothing my inernet rage.

Horseshoe theory, back in my day when we were hunting mammoths as opposed to Frazs' dinosaurs we were taught the political circle theory that both ends of the spectrum at extremes end up as totalitarianism.

I feel like that's even more powerful, coming from Medium.

daed, mind explaining Mediums angle ? I spent a small amount of time surfing a few articles and found most articles were not even remotely close in tone to the one previously mentioned. I still don't get what type of viewpoint it's trying to relate to.

I cannot for the life of me fathom how gender equality is going to be achieved if one half of the population (the half with more power, as well) is supposed to just sit back and do nothing. Yes, the patriarchy being fought against will just sit back and let itself be dismantled because reasons. The entire point of fighting the patriarchal structures in society is supposed to be to break its hold on both men and women. Good luck doing that when more and more crazy stuff like that Daily Life article pushes more and more people away from wanting to have anything to do at all with feminism.

On a slightly related note, I'm getting really, really tired of Focault's legacy, or at least the ways his ideas are being applied.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


On a slightly related note, I'm getting really, really tired of Focault's legacy, or at least the ways his ideas are being applied.

Can you expand on that ? curious what that intells.

 Bullockist wrote:
daed, mind explaining Mediums angle ? I spent a small amount of time surfing a few articles and found most articles were not even remotely close in tone to the one previously mentioned. I still don't get what type of viewpoint it's trying to relate to.

Well, what I remember from the last time I looked into them: I understand it to be more or less an invite only blogging platform trying to pass itself off as a online magazine. There are some people paid to write on it, and others who simply have the privilege, but they don't disclose who is who. One of the guys who founded it was one of the co-founders of twitter.

My personal observations of the site have been that they are pretty left leaning. I swear I've seen at least a couple articles there that are pro- current wave SJWism. I'll try to find a few examples, at some point today.

At any rate, given the fact that it's more or less a giant op-ed column, I can't help but read everything posted there with a grain of salt and feel like I have to verify most of everything I read.

 DarkNecro wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


On a slightly related note, I'm getting really, really tired of Focault's legacy, or at least the ways his ideas are being applied.

Can you expand on that ? curious what that intells.

Focault's works dealt with the relation between knowledge and power, and how the ability to decide what is legitimate knowledge is used as means of control. This, later, became a major influence on identity politics and the idea that since all knowledge is subjective to some extent, no one's point of view can be said to be more valid than anyone else's. Such an approach obviously makes any scientific approach based on rationalism ultimately useless, which is why I am so very tired of it. The short version is that it makes "Well, that's just like, your opinion" a valid counterargument to reasoned argumentation, which is insane.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:

 DarkNecro wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:


On a slightly related note, I'm getting really, really tired of Focault's legacy, or at least the ways his ideas are being applied.

Can you expand on that ? curious what that intells.

Focault's works dealt with the relation between knowledge and power, and how the ability to decide what is legitimate knowledge is used as means of control. This, later, became a major influence on identity politics and the idea that since all knowledge is subjective to some extent, no one's point of view can be said to be more valid than anyone else's. Such an approach obviously makes any scientific approach based on rationalism ultimately useless, which is why I am so very tired of it. The short version is that it makes "Well, that's just like, your opinion" a valid counterargument to reasoned argumentation, which is insane.

So internet meme FEELS>REALZ?

And women say they don't nag... Bloody feminazis. When something doesn't go their way they bitch and moan until everyone else doesn't have the strength to either argue or resist murdering them.

The bloke was elected by democratic vote. How much more "equal," liberal and fair can you get?

Was the voting restricted to women only?

 Torga_DW wrote:
Was the voting restricted to women only?

Not that I can find. If it was it still wouldn't be fair or democratic.

As far as I can see, the post was like your average student council. Nominate yourself to run for the post, everyone votes. 50% +1 majority and you win.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
That argument hinges on the assumption that no one outside that particular group can understand their particular situation, that this outsider would not have the intellectual or empathical ability to put him- or herself in the group's shoes.

As Ahtman rightly points out, you can empathise with another group of people completely, but that isn’t actually the same thing as being part of that group.

When I was in highschool they showed us this comedy made by some aboriginals, that ran with the idea of what it might feel like if white people were the natives here, and one day Aboriginals turned up claiming the place in the name of the Queen. It was pretty crappy, but one bit always stuck with me, and it was seeing an all-aboriginal parliament, including an aboriginal minister for white affairs. I’d never understood the argument before then, but seeing the colours reversed, it was so obvious how ridiculous it was.


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 Manchu wrote:
What I meant was, who gives a feth whether something happening in Australia is unconstitutional in the American sense?

It’s kind of hilarious when it comes from a poster who just loves to tell others how they don’t get to comment on the US if they’re not from there.

I mean, I think the distinction is actually kind of interesting and worth bringing up, what is legal in one country but not another is worth noting. But there’s a history there that makes this kind of funny.

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I cannot for the life of me fathom how gender equality is going to be achieved if one half of the population (the half with more power, as well) is supposed to just sit back and do nothing. Yes, the patriarchy being fought against will just sit back and let itself be dismantled because reasons.

An impossible task, since ultimately there will always be individual people, acting on a person to person basis, and for the forseeable future the average male will have more muscle mass than the average female.

 easysauce wrote:
yes, it is sexist, and it is discriminatory,

had the roles been reversed, with a female being excluded from holding a position that dealt with male rights, it would be called out as such.

however, its a male, so its ok to discriminate based on gender.

Maybe if a transgender woman (genetic male) ran it would cause some flakk if they asked her to resign

Read the article;
“It didn’t include the original clause, which was that the candidate must sign a statutory declaration to say they identify as a woman,”

While that one hypothetical can be rejected by just reading the article, I think it touches on the generally pointless approach of declaring something is bad because if hypothetically the opposite had happened then ‘other people’ would have complained. Ultimately you're being outraged by a self-created fiction.


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 Manchu wrote:
Gender restrictions on elected offices are not a path to respect for anyone.

It’s not about being a path to respect, it’s about the fairly simple idea that representative positions should have representatives who are actually part of that community.

I mean, there’s probably a lot of scope to argue whether a university student union actually needs a representative for women in this day and age, because it’s a long time since universities were a boy’s club. But if you’re going to have one, it isn’t rocket science to require it to actually be a woman.


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 Frazzled wrote:
While I care less about the guy (he's just padding a resume as they all are)

I understand it works that way in the US, but over here employers actually couldn’t give two gaks about extra-curricular work. In Australia people join student politics because they’re grinding their way to a career in politics with one of the major parties*, or because they actually belief in the nonsense that is student politics.


*Unlike the US, almost no-one spends life in the real world away from politics and then comes in to politics. All but a handful join a student party in university, and then spend the next two or three decades at tedious committee meetings and even more tedious Sunday barbecues working their way up the totem pole, waiting for their chance. This is because we don’t have decent primary elections like you guys. It’s a real problem, and has produced very insular parties with very small talent pools.


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 Manchu wrote:
Maybe you could fill in us foreigners on the partisan dynamics here

Youth and a deep ideological commitment rarely correlates with considered, mature world views. So the Young Liberals are fething ridiculous, but no more so than Young Labor, their opposites on the left.

Where they are different though, is in how they operate. Young Labor is prone to being hopelessly earnest and impractical, spending most of their time in student union committees putting through motions to protest treatment of refugees instead of, you know, properly managing student funds. In contract the Young Liberals are basically reactionary, they pretty much operate on the assumption that if they’re pissing off Young Labor they’re doing a good job.

That said, nothing this guy has said has made me suspect he was anything but earnest in what he wanted to do in the role.

 sebster wrote:
When I was in highschool they showed us this comedy made by some aboriginals, that ran with the idea of what it might feel like if white people were the natives here, and one day Aboriginals turned up claiming the place in the name of the Queen. It was pretty crappy, but one bit always stuck with me, and it was seeing an all-aboriginal parliament, including an aboriginal minister for white affairs. I’d never understood the argument before then, but seeing the colours reversed, it was so obvious how ridiculous it was.

This is worth highlighting. And exalted.

 sebster wrote:
So the Young Liberals are fething ridiculous, but no more so than Young Labor, their opposites on the left.

Wait, in Australia the Young Liberals are the right wing?

I went to the wiki page for the Young Liberals, it's great.

"Ideology Conservatism"

 sebster wrote:



It’s not about being a path to respect, it’s about the fairly simple idea that representative positions should have representatives who are actually part of that community.

You'd be surprised how often it actually happens, even in local government. I'll give you a recent example from where I live, where the area rep for the Shankill Road, Belfast, considered by everyone in Ireland and even the British mainland and beyond as the heart of Unionism, Loyalism and Protestantism, is somehow a member of Sinn Fein because the other areas in the electoral area are entirely Nationalist/Republican/Catholic.

 Ouze wrote:

 sebster wrote:
So the Young Liberals are fething ridiculous, but no more so than Young Labor, their opposites on the left.

Wait, in Australia the Young Liberals are the right wing?

And our toilets flush backwards. Is your mind blown?

This makes perfect sense to me whats the best way to show we are all equal then to be able to look in a room and know where everyone stands and who they represent then by what they look like. Black women by a black woman a white men by a white man. I see nothing wrong with separation of the races and sexes didn't we have something like that a hundred years ago worked out great didn't it.

 EmpNortonII wrote:

 AlmightyWalrus wrote:
I cannot for the life of me fathom how gender equality is going to be achieved if one half of the population (the half with more power, as well) is supposed to just sit back and do nothing. Yes, the patriarchy being fought against will just sit back and let itself be dismantled because reasons.

An impossible task, since ultimately there will always be individual people, acting on a person to person basis, and for the forseeable future the average male will have more muscle mass than the average female.

You're assuming that the majority of males would have no reason to want to change the status quo.