But to call going above and beyond a standard used to weed out the “slime” from “the real men” pretty much serves as a way to cheapen the sacrifice of those that make that choice by shaming those that don’t into doing what is supposedly not expected of them.

Exactly.

I’ve been reflecting on our back-and-forth with John in the other thread with and I find it interesting what a powerful technique it is to keep returning to your basic assumptions and to continue to state the ones the other side refuses to acknowledge.

John keeps switching back and forth between the idea that ethics matter and the idea that questions of ethics are no more important than how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

It reminds me of something Benjamin Franklin once said. I am probably not reproducing it exactly, but the gist was: Even between divines, arguments always reduce to one side saying “It is so” and the other saying “It is not so”.

I have noticed that a lot of dishonest discourse consists of obscuring the list of assertions you are really making while still asserting them. Backhanded assertion, you might call it.

Over on that thread our fellow commentor John stood firmly on his high horse to declare that any man that does not give his life up for a woman is slime. Now if he chooses to do such a thing great and I’m sure he will be remembered well. However I still say that if he (or anyone for that matter) chooses not to do such a thing that is NOT grounds to question their manhood or insult them. (On a slight relation I ask how fair is it to call a woman’s womanhood into question because she has an abortion or chooses not to have children?)

And speaking of being remembered well I was under the impression that people who make the ultimate sacrifice such as that were remembered and honored in such a manner because they CHOSE to go beyond standard expectation. People in the military that go off to fight for our country get all kinds of respect from me because they are doing something that I know I could never bring myself to do (and that is to willfully put myself in a life or death position of “its him/her or me”). Same thing with disasters. The people who give up their lives are honored because the chose to do so.

But to call going above and beyond a standard used to weed out the “slime” from “the real men” pretty much serves as a way to cheapen the sacrifice of those that make that choice by shaming those that don’t into doing what is supposedly not expected of them.

One thing that distinguishes your posts is how you often focus on gaining perspective (identifying issues and weighing their relative importance) instead of trying to make the most persuasive case for alarm. I think that sort of writing is very rare.

I also like the way you keep returning to your understanding of the root causes of restrictive gender roles (men are expected to take risks and women are expected to raise families).

Feminism has already walked down that path once, and it simply doesn’t work.

If by “work” you mean achieve liberation from gender roles, then point taken.

I think some people have very different definitions of “work”, though, having more to do with the shifting of resources around and the creation of various priesthoods to govern society. By those definitions, feminism has been a smashing success.