What women are now finding are new breeds of behavior from men that are puzzling, frustrating and shocking.

I am curious what new behaviors you are thinking of here.

I think eventually people must realize the madness we are giving in to, but it may well take more than 50 years I’m afraid. We will look back at the 21st century and wonder how we could have been so stupid. This is pretty much what we do every century I guess.

“My bottom line on gender is this: society encourages men to take great risks with their lives and discounts their close relationships with their families, while it encourages women to raise families and discounts their ambitions (in commerce and education). It’s not a big deal if a man dies in a war, or early from the stress of running a company. It’s also not a big deal if a talented woman doesn’t get much of an education, or doesn’t get to start a company.”

I do not know the debate in your country, but in Sweden it actually IS a big deal when women do not get their desired education (even in a situation where 60% of college graduees are women in total, and the discussed educations have severly skewed gender representations, in some cases as far as 90% women compared to 10% men)) and it IS a big deal here when women do not achieve economical or political power. And it seems to be a big deal in Europe en large, since positive affirmation is being popularly considered in several countries for what is regarded as power-sated top positions in European societies.

Here in Sweden, (a bit summarizing) our media is simultaneously argueing against positive affirmative actions when men as a minority group apply for college educations e.g., but condone at the very same time for such actions to be desirable if and only women are identified as being the gender that is being discriminated.

And at the same time, men are being blamed for all war actions.

So, in Sweden, yes it is a big deal if a woman is not granted political or economical power and yes it is a big deal when men kill people, during war duty (this making men evil, but not exploring the fact that the young man was forced into battle), only recently having been abolished. But already media is gathering arguments for mandatory military male service…

And it ISN’T a big deal in each and every case where men’s disadvantages in society have been identified, just as it ISN’t a big deal when women find themselves in very advantageous positions versus men.

By the Swedish feministic debate.

Now, of course, you may have a view upon gender roles that each gender is expected to fulfill certain duties, but feminist rethorics neither acknowledge the need of demands to be explained female careerseekers nor mens sacrifices, where women always and continously are being portrayed as victims no matter of what, and men as evil perpertrators of all evil crimes imaginable.

I would very easily agree on dimorphic gender roles, but only if these are being evaluated in a fair mannner.

In short, regardless of whether you believe in a genderbased dimorphic society or a total equalistic one, wouldn’t it in either case be a very moderate and fair expectation of a society to acknowledge both genders on equal reasoning basis?

And this is where I disagree with Chris: no, men and women are not being equally judged, appreciated nor compared under a feministicly influenced debate.

As far as workplace policy goes, if a company put men and women into separate departments, there would be a huge boost in productivity. Feminism will not have that, because it aims to take the fruits and prestige away from men.

Risk taking is a good thing, if it is properly managed by laws and regulations.

Just now there is a lot of opining that mens’ tendency to take risks is what landed the US/Uk in the present economic mess. Womens’ consumption habits had absolutely nothing whatsoever do with it, naturally. The opining continues on to say that women would not have made the same mistakes.

That will likely be another aspect of feminism that in 50 years will be looked down upon in the same way that we now look down on the hypocrisy of the founders of the US demanding freedom while keeping a large portion of the population enslaved.

It is a difficult sell to say that all bad things stem solely from one group’s risk-taking while claiming that another group’s constant consumerism has zero impact on the decisions that were made, particularly since the economy is driven in part by the demands of the market. It could reasonably be argued that if there had not been such high demands for low mortgages, loans and other goods that those on Wall Street may not have made the decisions that eventually crippled the US economy, which in turn damaged the global economy.

No. But you are going to pander either to a self-image as the fainty dainty who needs and can demand protection or to a self-image of th big, bad-ass protector.

“My bottom line on gender is this: society encourages men to take great risks with their lives and discounts their close relationships with their families,…’

Warfare is the common extreme example people use to illustrate this, with the standard response “Well how many men does that really affect these days” (As if that objection is ever allowed when the 10,000 years of patriarchal oppression are dragged out.) The better examples are the dangerous jobs many, many men still do and the overwhelmingly male incidence of workplace death and injury.

Juyst now there is a lot of opining that mens’ tendency to take risks is what landed the US/Uk in the present economic mess. Womens’ consumption habits had absolutely nothing whatsoever do with it, naturally. The opining continues on to say that women would not have made the same mistakes. Of course not, that’s the point. Women “have people for that kind of thing.”

My bottom line on gender is this: society encourages men to take great risks with their lives and discounts their close relationships with their families, while it encourages women to raise families and discounts their ambitions (in commerce and education). It’s not a big deal if a man dies in a war, or early from the stress of running a company. It’s also not a big deal if a talented woman doesn’t get much of an education, or doesn’t get to start a company.
I agree with JayR that this is a very thoughtful. All too often when it comes to people of gender rights we will speak of the suffering and plights of one group while actively denying the suffering and plight of other groups (I don’t say “the other group” on account of people who do not abide by the two gender binary of male or female). You’re not going to fix the world by telling some groups to “wait and see” while other groups get full attention.