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Originally Posted by Jamie89
Great post, and I think the bit in bold is very true of most discussions about equality. But yeah this really is what feminism is about for me, not necessarily needing to make big changes (in terms of laws and things) but reinforcing general values, and I think that's where the thoughts of "women already have rights so if they want more then they want to be more than equal" come in because it misunderstands that continued feminism isn't about more and more rights, like the rights are there because they need to be in order to get to a place of equal treatment, as the foundations of it I suppose, but equal treatment still isn't always happening.
As an example I used to help with the recruitment in a company I worked for and my boss would favour male applicants because she had sexist views about men being better workers (and also having to pay for womens maternity leave etc, it was a relatively small business so she would consider the potential costs of that) and really there is no way of stopping someone like that filtering applications accordingly to their prejudice, marking someone more harshly during an interview, etc etc. (I think this is a good example as well as to it not being a men vs women thing in terms of feminism.) She'd also be harsher in general to the female employees when they made mistakes. And equal rights laws being in place isn't actually going to change someone like that's attitudes.
And I think feminism should include areas where men receive poorer treatment than women as well since it's all part of the same thing which is essentially prejudice based on gender and that can come from both men and women, and be directed towards both men and women. There might be more of it directed towards women from men so there's generally more of a focus on that but that shouldn't be a reason to exclude any other issues that arise from gender inequality, like TS says it should be a cooperative thing.
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Yeah women can be just as guilty of the sexist attitudes as men 100%.
Oh another example of the negative stereotyping being enforced and validated is when we're driving and on the journey we might come across 4 drivers who will have done something to annoy Gav and 2 of them might be male and the other two female, when it's the male driver it's because they're an idiot but when it's a female it's because she's a female. It's this kind of thing that keeps all these stereotypes and attitudes going in society.
I've seen a few people say that we shouldn't be thinking like we have a hive mind and that we're all individuals etc which I don't disagree with, infact it's absolutely what I believe on a personal level, this is why I get so annoyed about everyday sexism and the pushing of these negative stereotypes