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TheThievingMick wrote:
The solution only works if it's broadly enforced. It's not. You can google your own evidence though. I'm just here to poke fun at bigots. I know I'm not going to convince anyone over the internet--but I can certainly laugh at folks.

That's not helpful or constructive in any manner in this thread.

 Kiggler wrote:

 kestral wrote:
If .6% of some thousands of people were sending me threatening messages, I'd be pretty pissed off.

If I was getting that many threatening messages I would look back on what I said or did to piss so many people off and see what I did wrong. I would also try to have a discussion with them on why they feel that way. Try to be a decent human being and try to understand their side.

"I HOPE YOU GET KILLED AND RAPED"

"Oh poor soul, please, explain me wy you feel that way. How have I wrong you?"

Don't take this as a defense of Anita, but I just find too absurd the idea of reasoning with people that is sending you death threads. I think here you where just exagerating for the shake of making her look bad (Not something you need to do, she makes herself look bad enough) , nobody sane would react that way in that situation.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
ITT, people fail to recognize the keyboard *systemic*, or they fail to understand what it means.

*Systemic* sexual harassment basically does not exist in the United States, and hasn't been for decades. Title IX alone is proof of that.

If anyone is going to disagree, then you need to step up with evidence where such harassment is broadly condoned.

Individual acts are not systemic, especially if their becoming public would result in consequences to the harasser. The very fact of those consequences is, again, evidence that systemic sexual harassment is no longer an issue

Couldn't have said it better myself.

 kestral wrote:
If .6% of some thousands of people were sending me threatening messages, I'd be pretty pissed off.

Welcome to the Internet, where deaththreats are almost like saying "Hello!".

That's not excusing the behavior, but more pointing out that it is not unique to her in any way (she plays it up as though it's something out of the ordinary). People get death threats for giving bad review scores. For giving good review scores. For not liking something that you like. For liking something that you don't like. I mean "Kill ur self LOL" might as well have its own button on standard keyboards it gets used so often.

Also, didn't a number of studies find that a majority of harassment women face online actually came from other women?

Here's a study from the UN on sexual harrssment in the EU, broken down by nation. There are industry breakdowns on page 25, types of harassment on page 29, and a more in depth discussion of the UK starting on page 143. (all pages are pdf page number, not internal page number) It is older (most studies from 1989-1993). http://www.un.org/womenwatch/osagi/pdf/shworkpl.pdf

didn't the UN put Saudi Arabia on the womens rights council, just saying

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I'm pretty sure systemic sexual harassment ended at least 40 years ago. It's not like you can just slap you secretary on the ass, or bend her over the desk like in the Mad Men days. Nowadays, you do that, you get fired and go to jail.

OTOH, in India, I understand that the multi-day gang rape and brutal murder of women is just a fact of life there, without the slightest consequences.

It's the literal difference between "I'm being repressed!" and the violence inherent in the system.

Sexual harassment still happens here. It's still a problem where my wife works, and people have gone to jail for things they've done. I just don't think it gets much press outside of smallfry like OC Weekly.

On a similar note, she used to participate on message boards for fanfiction and crochet and things like that, and she had to stop due to the dick pics and threats she received.


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 Kiggler wrote:

 kestral wrote:
If .6% of some thousands of people were sending me threatening messages, I'd be pretty pissed off.

If I was getting that many threatening messages I would look back on what I said or did to piss so many people off and see what I did wrong. I would also try to have a discussion with them on why they feel that way. Try to be a decent human being and try to understand their side.

Yeah, threat victims shouldn't be so provocative. that MLK should really have stepped back to rethink things .

I honestly don't know how to respond to that. Don't know whole lot about MLK and did some research. Learned more about slavery in high school rather then MLK. My main point is that if your receiving a lot of hate as well as evidence that proves your argument wrong shouldn't you take step back and review the new information instead of dismissing it as harassment. In this day in age I believe people will receive some form of hate for what they believe in but the answer is to not to ignore everyone with opposing viewpoint and call them sexist, racist, nazi, etc. MLK believed in equality as well using nonviolence methods did he not? If he was here to day do you think he would agree with the the mentality of people who dismiss others arguments as all racist or sexist. There will be people in this world that won't like, argue or even despise you but I still think its important to understand why they hold such views whether if they were raised that way or hold a grudge. I honestly believe if people sat down and just talked out there disagreements we could solve a lot gak in this world. A black man convinced 200 KKK members to leave by just talking with them. https://www.npr.org/2017/08/20/544861933/how-one-man-convinced-200-ku-klux-klan-members-to-give-up-their-robes People have a lot more in common with each other then they realize if they just sat back and had a drink with each other. Hope I am not sounding like a hippie .

The only thing worse than Anita Sarkeesian speaking at GenCon is talking about her speaking at GenCon. She makes her living off the outrage generated by her posts. Every time she's ignored, the less probable it is one will need to hear from her in the future.

There have been a number of studies suggesting online harassment of women in gaming communities predominantly comes from other women. If it helps, try to remember that most of what she has to say is focused on a small minority of gamers, does not represent the whole, and almost certainly is not talking about you.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
ITT, people fail to recognize the keyboard *systemic*, or they fail to understand what it means.

*Systemic* sexual harassment basically does not exist in the United States, and hasn't been for decades. Title IX alone is proof of that.

If anyone is going to disagree, then you need to step up with evidence where such harassment is broadly condoned.

Individual acts are not systemic, especially if their becoming public would result in consequences to the harasser. The very fact of those consequences is, again, evidence that systemic sexual harassment is no longer an issue

We weren't talking about systemic sexism. It makes your statement a non sequitur in a discussion of tabletop wargaming. That's just a qualifier you threw in for a quick gotcha you could pull when people sensibly ignored it.


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 techsoldaten wrote:
The only thing worse than Anita Sarkeesian speaking at GenCon is talking about her speaking at GenCon. She makes her living off the outrage generated by her posts. Every time she's ignored, the less probable it is one will need to hear from her in the future.

There have been a number of studies suggesting online harassment of women in gaming communities predominantly comes from other women..

Do you have a link?


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Kiggler , your first sentence said nothing about evidence. Even so, threats should not be treated the same way as reasoned arguments (and vice versa), and do not deserve any such response as soul searching. People do not threaten because they have a convincing argument or logical rebuttal.

Come on, dude, that wasn't a "gotcha"... if anything, it was an honest failure to quote the specific post I was responding to.

 cuda1179 wrote:
Also, didn't a number of studies find that a majority of harassment women face online actually came from other women?

Did they? Can you find them?

Still reading through that first study that was linked. Thinking about abandoning it because I feel like the data variance is too large to draw any conclusions. Every other line is, we believe this to be true, but the various studies differ from 24% to 75% (actual numbers mentioned). This was also seen, but the studies varied from 18% to 66% - I mean these are big freaking differences here. I'm not sure how accurate any conclusions are, drawn from data that represents both a rare situation and a worrisome epidemic at the same time.

But I found the following interesting, at least, specifically talking about a particular Dutch study:

"The lowest rate of sexual harassment was found in workplaces with little inequality between the sexes. These workplaces were characterized by a relatively equal distribution of women and men throughout the hierarchical structure of the workplace and the sex ratio. On the other hand, women in workplaces with the most uneven balance of power between the sexes did not report the highest number of incidences of sexual harassment; the highest rate of reported harassment was found in those workplaces where the power differentials were still uneven, but to a lesser extent than the most unequal workplaces. In these workplaces women have gradually gained access to a few higher status jobs. The findings suggest that the growing participation of women in working life goes hand in hand with a temporary increase in incidents of sexual harassment."

Long story short, places with the most unequal number of men to women did not have the worst numbers for sexual harassment. I'd have to dig up the Dutch study directly to see by exactly how much. I'm not sure where they are getting the "temporary" part from, as there's no evidence that I can tell that changing the gender balance would produce any effect. Instead, it is far more likely that the workplaces that were "naturally" equal (or "naturally" very unequal) had these characteristics. Forcing a change in balance may or may not affect an increase or decrease in sexual harassment incidents, but that's not what they studied nor what they controlled for, so I don't think it is fair to draw that conclusion. It very well could be a correlation without causation.

Still, since video games and tabletop gaming are naturally very (extremely) unequal in gender balance, by this study's conclusion, there should be less sexual harassment overall than fandoms with a higher, but still unequal gender balance (such as Game of Thrones fandom, or Parrotheads). Something to look into, I guess.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
The only thing worse than Anita Sarkeesian speaking at GenCon is talking about her speaking at GenCon. She makes her living off the outrage generated by her posts. Every time she's ignored, the less probable it is one will need to hear from her in the future.

There have been a number of studies suggesting online harassment of women in gaming communities predominantly comes from other women..

Do you have a link?

The ones I saw were journal articles and I would need to find them.

The one I can share right now is the 2014 Pew Study on online harassment. It's interesting in the context of a discussion about Anita. One of the key points I took away from it:

Overall, men are somewhat more likely than women to experience at least one of the elements of online harassment, 44% vs. 37%. In terms of specific experiences, men are more likely than women to encounter name-calling, embarrassment, and physical threats.

Something to understand is this study looks at all online harassment, not just in the gaming community. There's a correlation between the level of harassment and someone's profession - i.e. if you work in the tech sector, you are more likely to report harassment in response to this survey. Online gaming accounts for about 16% of the harassment discussed in the report, compared to 66% in social networks.

It's worth it to look at the full report and read the questions asked, starting on page 54. Just before that, there are some excerpts demonstrating some of the harassment being reported.

A lot of people this report for various ends and I don't always agree with the conclusions they reach.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Come on, dude, that wasn't a "gotcha"... if anything, it was an honest failure to quote the specific post I was responding to.

Ok. My apologies. Maybe I missed that.

 techsoldaten wrote:
It's worth it to look at the full report and read the questions asked, starting on page 54. Just before that, there are some excerpts demonstrating some of the harassment being reported.

Oh boy, another study! Checked it out briefly and it was a self administered survey (the surveys are sent out randomly, but people chose whether to respond - some selection bias, but not bad. Almost 10,000 people were asked, 5,500 responded were sent he questionaire) of 2,849 (so, a statistically representative number, which is good, but about 50% response rate). So far, so good. About as good as you are going to get from a voluntary internet survey.

Unfortunately, in the introduction, it repeats some commonly held mistruths (Quinn being forced out of her home rather than taking a planned vacation) concerning GamerGate and links to an extremely one sided NPR article that literally interviewed only people in Sarkeesian's clique. Sarkeesian, Quinn, Adam Saltsman (created the anti-GG "GamerGate Scoreboard" website, once wrote a GamaSutra editorial just to insult me just because he didn't like my website - cue tiny violin), and Leigh Alexander (wrote the first "gamers are dead article"). Entirely one-sided. However, being just the introduction, that has no relevance to the findings of the data. It's just annoying.

I like that the questions are listed, along with the percentage of respondents who answered. Very good for drilling deep into the data. The questions seem relevant and generally not misleading, and the part where they selectively quote the write in answers seems at first glance to cover a wide variety of viewpoints and opinions. In short, other than that short bit in the intro, it looks like a pretty good study that I would consider a valid research attempt - at least by the standards I have come to know these studies by. Always take things with a grain of salt, but I would consider the data revealed in this study to be pretty good. I'll have to dig into the actual data next to see what the study actually says and whether their conclusions are reasonable based on it.

BobtheInquisitor

I never said threats are okay but wouldn't you be at least a little bit curious as to why people would want to crucify you or find out why someone would even say such a thing. I know I would. You don't necessarily have to confront the people doing it either with the internet and all. If your in the public view you can look up why people would say such hateful things. Yes threats should be treated seriously and even myself would be hesitant to meet someone publicly face to face to discuss why they did.

Did Anita receive threats? Yes
Why? She called gamers sexist misogynist and all video games promote violence and sexual harassment towards women.
What evidence or facts did she provide? Very little to none. Lies. Plays the victim. Contradicts herself. Stole content from others.
Is there evidence against her arguments? 100's of articles and youtube videos.
What does she think of her critics? She views all of them as harassers and part of the problem.
Does she debate with anyone about her arguments? No

Hmm I wonder why people dislike her. If you act and treat people like garbage then don't be surprised people treat you as such. Nobody deserves death threats and alike but people are quick to defend their hobbies and interest when they come under attack. Sometimes they go too far. A lot of it is a over reaction. That doesn't mean its right to do so. Unfortunately she used this to her own success and rode the victim wagon to fame for a couple years. I just want people to realize people receive hate for a reason. She dismissed anyone with a opposing views as a bigot yet she is a perfect definition of one.

i'm not going to speak for you, personally, but I doubt any normal person would respond as you describe. From her point of view, she got threats because what she said was true. That's the obvious conclusion. The threats reinforce her correctness, not call it into question. She knows exactly why people are sending her threats, or she thinks she does.


Honestly, in her shoes I'd draw the same conclusions.
"Gaming is full of bad people."
"I'll rape you to death for saying that!"

Confirmed.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 techsoldaten wrote:
It's worth it to look at the full report and read the questions asked, starting on page 54. Just before that, there are some excerpts demonstrating some of the harassment being reported.

Oh boy, another study! Checked it out briefly and it was a self administered survey (the surveys are sent out randomly, but people chose whether to respond - some selection bias, but not bad. Almost 10,000 people were asked, 5,500 responded were sent he questionaire) of 2,849 (so, a statistically representative number, which is good, but about 50% response rate). So far, so good. About as good as you are going to get from a voluntary internet survey.

Unfortunately, in the introduction, it repeats some commonly held mistruths (Quinn being forced out of her home rather than taking a planned vacation) concerning GamerGate and links to an extremely one sided NPR article that literally interviewed only people in Sarkeesian's clique. Sarkeesian, Quinn, Adam Saltsman (created the anti-GG "GamerGate Scoreboard" website, once wrote a GamaSutra editorial just to insult me just because he didn't like my website - cue tiny violin), and Leigh Alexander (wrote the first "gamers are dead article"). Entirely one-sided. However, being just the introduction, that has no relevance to the findings of the data. It's just annoying.

I like that the questions are listed, along with the percentage of respondents who answered. Very good for drilling deep into the data. The questions seem relevant and generally not misleading, and the part where they selectively quote the write in answers seems at first glance to cover a wide variety of viewpoints and opinions. In short, other than that short bit in the intro, it looks like a pretty good study that I would consider a valid research attempt - at least by the standards I have come to know these studies by. Always take things with a grain of salt, but I would consider the data revealed in this study to be pretty good. I'll have to dig into the actual data next to see what the study actually says and whether their conclusions are reasonable based on it.

Well, I encourage you to ask yourself what this study means when it says 'harassment.'

Part of the reason I like this study is the examples of harassment tell a story that is a little different from the conclusions.

Bob - Do you really think she's so naive with respect to people on the Internet?

I'm more cynical than you, and I think all of the "threats" were actually "false flag" publicity. That's why the FBI didn't do anything - there was nothing to do.

That is, she's a demonstrated liar, so I naturally ascribe falsehood to anything and everything she does.

I don't know her well enough to say. However, from my own experiences seeing what people type on gaming boards, and knowing the harassment my wife has received on sites much less hostile to diversity, I instinctually disagree about the false flag nature of the complaints.

OK, fair enough. I won't argue the point further. Laters

The only important distinction to draw in this context is whether or not there is hard evidence that women are consistently and deliberately stopped from engaging in tabletop games.

Of course that's a really complex problem to figure out, not least because you have to define which different causes are responsible.

Is it that women aren't as interested in such hobbies on average?

Are they socially discouraged not to be interested in them?

If the above is found true, who is enforcing the discouragement?

Can women be the primary judgers of other women's behaviour?

Or is it only men who are responsible?

Do women experience a large amount of sexist remarks and attitudes in the tabletop gaming world that puts them off?

If so, what are the examples and what can be done about them?

Is it reasonable to extend an assumption of sexist undertones to the presentation of female models and characters?

Or is there an argument (and I've heard some myself) for the difference in how men and women are visually impacted by the opposite?

With the result that female characters are more likely to possess exaggerated features associated with a feminine form?

Do male characters also have the same exaggeration?

Is it about who shows more skin?

Is there a social maladaptive background for many tabletop gamers resulting in a sexual frustration that manifests as highly sexualised female models?

(Now this question I've heard pretty much my entire time in the hobby from around the age of 5, personally I find it fascinating that you can fight prejudice with another prejudice, but I'll include it nonetheless).

Is any of this, if found true, a deliberate attempt by an invisible force of patriarchal suppression?

Is patriarchy real? (This one probably needs to get straightened out before all the others I think).

For me there needs to be a serious investigation of all these types of questions and more.

At the moment in the social sciences there is a huge bias towards an extremely left learning political stance, with a tendency to presume the conclusion long before any evidence.

On the other hand I'm also no fan of the extreme right either.

Both seem to be playing the same game of divide and conquer by group identity, to the detriment of the individual.

And it's a terrible time to be an individual.

The patriarchy is real, but it's not an intentional conspiracy. It is a power structure and like all power structures the cultural tendancy is to preserve itself. It is not a concious decision of anyone in particular to create or sustain a patriarchy (I mean excluding some weirdo crackpots on the internet who think women should be property - there are equivalents who think all men are rapists or whatever so I think we can just disregard extremists like that and look at the middle ground). It is a result of unconcious bias and people with power taking rational decisions to maintain their power - usually not out of any dislike for women. Like in my work place it is about 80% women, but management is almost entirely male. I am not as competent at administration as some of my female colleagues, but I've been offered promotion before them on multiple occasions. If I take the promotion, which is good for me, I perpetuate the patriarchy but not because I hate women, because I have an advantage and it is rational for me to pursue it. This is also part of why systemic racism does not require much in the way of overt racism to happen - it happens because of unconcious bias and maintenance of power structures. You can be part of the patriarchy and not have a sexist bone in your body, but simply benefit from it.

Now, I think that the patriarchy is actually also kind of bad for men, particularly men that don't fit in well. Look at the higher suicide rates and incarceration rates for me, the higher number of homeless men and the higher numbers of men who are substance abusers and you can see that the pressure of the patriarchy to perform and achieve and maintain is too much for many of us.

If you wanted to give the patriarchy a less loaded name (I know some people get upset by the terminology, look at how people react to the phrase "toxic masculinity" as though it meant all masculinity and not just those parts of the masculine ideal that are harmful for men to pursue), I would be fine with that, but we have the term patriarchy and I'm not going to get too upset about it.

Also, if we had a matriarchy, I believe that it would be just the same as a patriarchy in terms of sustaining it's position and power.

 Da Boss wrote:
The patriarchy is real, but it's not an intentional conspiracy. It is a power structure and like all power structures the cultural tendancy is to preserve itself. It is not a concious decision of anyone in particular to create or sustain a patriarchy (I mean excluding some weirdo crackpots on the internet who think women should be property - there are equivalents who think all men are rapists or whatever so I think we can just disregard extremists like that and look at the middle ground). It is a result of unconcious bias and people with power taking rational decisions to maintain their power - usually not out of any dislike for women. Like in my work place it is about 80% women, but management is almost entirely male. I am not as competent at administration as some of my female colleagues, but I've been offered promotion before them on multiple occasions. If I take the promotion, which is good for me, I perpetuate the patriarchy but not because I hate women, because I have an advantage and it is rational for me to pursue it. This is also part of why systemic racism does not require much in the way of overt racism to happen - it happens because of unconcious bias and maintenance of power structures. You can be part of the patriarchy and not have a sexist bone in your body, but simply benefit from it.

Now, I think that the patriarchy is actually also kind of bad for men, particularly men that don't fit in well. Look at the higher suicide rates and incarceration rates for me, the higher number of homeless men and the higher numbers of men who are substance abusers and you can see that the pressure of the patriarchy to perform and achieve and maintain is too much for many of us.

If you wanted to give the patriarchy a less loaded name (I know some people get upset by the terminology, look at how people react to the phrase "toxic masculinity" as though it meant all masculinity and not just those parts of the masculine ideal that are harmful for men to pursue), I would be fine with that, but we have the term patriarchy and I'm not going to get too upset about it.

Also, if we had a matriarchy, I believe that it would be just the same as a patriarchy in terms of sustaining it's position and power.

There isn't any evidence in your post that a patriarchal system, of the nature espoused by individuals like Anita, exists though. I'm not saying it doesn't exist at all, I'm simply trying to garner more evidence (as part of a broader area of inspection i.e: the other questions I posed).

And I'm not upset by the term either, I more concerned by it's relevancy. For example you said you were chosen over female members of staff who you stated were more competent in administration than yourself. But that's a biased sample, because firstly: it's only your interpretation that you were chosen over more competent members of staff who are female. And secondly: did you enquire as to why you were chosen over them and if those who chose you gave you reasons that were prejudicial in nature? And thirdly: Who else is rating competence in that context?

Management is almost entirely male. That's another issue in assuming that these hierarchies operate only via power, it plays a part, but it's not the only part. And I'm going to open myself up to an enormous amount of flak here by stating the controversial point that men and women are very different (although we are more similar than different as well) and that these differences are not entirely socialised. For example your point about male suicide and incarceration goes well in hand with my point that it isn't a particularly relevant term, since every definition I've ever seen describes it as 'a social system in which males hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property.' - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarchy.

Or "Patriarchy is the term used to describe the society in which we live today, characterised by current and historic unequal power relations between women and men whereby women are systematically disadvantaged and oppressed. " http://londonfeministnetwork.org.uk/home/patriarchy

The problem is that if it only systematically disadvantages women, how is it that those suicide and incarceration numbers for men are so high? Can that really be defined as 'primary power'? And I can't help but note that this is largely about leadership positions, or high status jobs. Who is it that do most of the least glamorous jobs, like being stuck on an oil rig for several months in harsh conditions, risking a fairly high rate of injury? They are nearly all men.

But going back to those differences, there tend to be a small number of extremely productive men who rise up competence hierarchies (not power hierarchies) because they obsessively dedicate hundreds of hours to the pursuit of that particular field. And that isn't necessarily a good life to lead, either, it's very hard work, stressful and lonely. And to bring in another controversial point, women do tend to make different choices in those hierarchies & while being no less competent, they often get to a certain age and decide they want to settle down with a family, which is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. But I also wouldn't mock the reverse of the woman going back to work and the man staying at home; nothing wrong with that either.

It's just not the choice that is often made.

And I'm not saying you cannot find examples of power plays, corruption and nepotism, you absolutely can. But I severely doubt them as being part of a commonplace system of prejudicial intent, otherwise the competent people would eventually be filtered out and the whole system would collapse. The fact that our society functions at all in the day to day, is evidence that...on the whole, most of this is about competence, not power. Although politicians certainly have a lot to answer for.

Our systems are certainly not perfect and there are always improvements that can be made, but they are much further from the dark worst that they could be.

Lets not forget that for a large portion of human history most human beings were treated very poorly and had little to no rights as individual living creatures. Without intending to dismiss gender-specific issues, such as a lack of safe birth control for women (which didn't come into play until as late as the 1960's).

As for unconscious biases, I'm not sure. It's hard to define them as they exist in a nebulous state & most of the research suggests adopting an individual level of behavioural change. For example one study suggested that people's amygdala (associated with fight or flight responses in the brain) was less active when viewing what they called 'out group' faces (in other words of a different skin colour) over taking more time to view the face (0.03 to 0.5 seconds). I'll try to find the study later if I can.

But it's difficult to spot and figure out what to do with unconscious bias, however I think that is a massive topic in itself.

The problems we have are deeper and more complicated than the feminist concept of patriarchy suggests. And when we point the finger at homogenised groups; nobody wins.

I have presented some limited evidence, you have disregarded it. You also disregard the evidence from larger studies as being explainable by individual choices, and to an extent that is true, but you exclude the cultural context the choices take place in.

And it is undeniable that men hold more power in the world than women, just because some men do badly out of it does not mean that a patriarchy does not exist, merely that said patriarchy can be bad for both men and women.

I also have clearly said that outside of a tiny minority of cases there is no intent to create a patriarchy. Men traditionally held more power in most societies (undeniably true). Power tends to sustain and propagate itself (it is the nature of power to do so). There is no patriarchy master plan. It is a consequence of history.

You want objective, hard, scientific standard evidence of something you would accept calling a patriarchy. I am afraid such evidence does not exist- culture is too complex and interlinked to be immune from argument and presented in a scientific way. We must use other critical thinking tools to evaluate the evidence available to us, which will never be as solid as the evidence in more objective fields. This is the challenge and nature of studying cultures and societies.

Our problems are indeed deep and complex, and patriarchy is only one aspect of them. I'm much more concerned with environmental destruction personally, but I can stop and acknowledge that I exist in a patriarchal system.

Give it a few years. The men who are in power right now (real power, not like your shift manager) have a very distinct identifier other than "being male". They are all 50/55+. Which means that they did their grind to power 20-30 years ago, and that field was waaaay too uphill for women. The effects of this we can see today, but you don't fix this by cutting women slack now.

Thankfully time is an unbiased cruel bitch and these "powerful" men will grow old, wither and die - ironically the same exact way as all the not powerful men and women. When this happens new people will come in power, and these people will have made their grind for power in our days. Do you think women will be under represented again at that time?

Yeah, I think they will be. Less under represented than in the past, particularly in the Western World, but in lots of other places women will continue to be oppressed.

I think we also focus a bit too much on the West, where women have the best chance at an equal life, and do not look at the rest of the world, where the patriarchy is glaringly obvious. Western Feminism is often guilty of ignoring the likes of Saudi Arabia, for example.

 Da Boss wrote:
Also, if we had a matriarchy, I believe that it would be just the same as a patriarchy in terms of sustaining it's position and power.

I'm going to say that there IS a matriarchy. Not in the same way as the patriarchy, but it's still there.

I would honestly be happier with a word that encompassed what I think you are talking about (ideas like "women and children first!" and so on). The word patriarchy I am using to refer to "existing cultural structures around gender" with I suppose a particular focus on male power. I think it gets really twisted when you look at the whole picture and realize that it is a bit more complex and patriarchy is likely too loaded on one side, but I still think overall it is the word we have and I do not know a better one.

 cuda1179 wrote:
I'm going to say that there IS a matriarchy. Not in the same way as the patriarchy, but it's still there.

I for one am tired of males being forced into Melee-Magthere without even the option to go to Arach-Tinilith instead.