Sorry I'm late to the party but I felt the need to share my thoughts on this one.
1- I am in no way sexist or racist.
2- I am a strong supporter of
equal rights for all sexes and races.
This woman says it all and is spot on; however I feel the need to elaborate on a few points that mean something to me.
1- Say an African American Woman, a White Woman, a Hispanic Man, and myself (a White Man) all applied for the
same job. All four of us have the exact
same qualifications. I would be the
last person on this list considered for the position. In fact we would be considered in the order previously listed. Women > Minorities > White Men. I personally believe that if this unrealistic scenario were to take place, the employer should hire who they think is right for the job based on personality not sex or race. Especially since women are not minorities, there is almost and equal number of women and men on this planet.
Source
2- As a U.S. Soldier and Afghanistan veteran I have served with many people of different race and sex. I am proud to call these people my
family. I am happy that women are finally allowed jobs in combat positions. What I'm not happy with is this. At my age group; physical fitness
standards for men are 40 push-ups in 2 minutes, 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes, and a 2 mile run in 16:36. In that exact same age group; physical fitness
standards for women are 17 push-ups in 2 minutes, 50 sit-ups in 2 minutes, and a 2 mile run in 19:36.
If you are going to preform the
same job as me for the
same pay you should be held to the
same standards. Especially when our job is life and death. I expect that if I am wounded a female solider should be physically fit enough to drag me to safety especially when I am expected to be physically fit enough to do the
same for her.
3- Masculinism. Now if this were to suddenly become as big of an issue as feminism has become, many feminist would scream that it is sexist. Simply put feminism now days has grown into something its not. It has lost its roots and does seem to be more about
supremacy than
equality. Current day "feminist" strive for
equal rights; however if we were to take something away that benefits women in order to make it
equal across the board we would have an uproar from the entire "feminist" community.
No. Feminism is not
hurting men. Men are
not oppressed or under privileged. But I am sick of the double standards.
The video you posted, I watched, but it's full of a series of mistruths or fallacies to where I would rather link
this article, than reply to it directly to each other than to note a few things.
All of the gendered issues which were discussed by Ms. Southern in her video are in fact discussed critically by feminists, sometimes vocally and prolifically, especially those in which she claimed feminists to be silent. The "
**** is ****" campaign, spearheaded by Feminists, Feminist groups, and Feminist media, provided the
political pressure to cause the FBI to change its definition of **** in 2012 to actually allow for male ***** to be recorded in their unified crime reporting systems. The specific change in question was from "the carnal knowledge of a female, forcibly and against her will", first established in 1929, to "The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim". Since UCR is how we collect statistics on crimes like ****, feminist movements were
instrumental in our ability as an American society to challenge the norms when it comes to sex crimes against men, and in order to give our own justice system the tools with which to actually give somewhat of an idea as to how prevalent male victimization via **** is based on actually allowing us to keep statistics on the crime reports. For more on rebutting the video please click the article I linked, as it, unlike Southern's video, cites its sources, and for that reason and others it's more capable of being exposed to greater scrutiny and review. Purposefully misleading people by claiming that Feminists are silent on these issues,
when a simple google search shows that openly critical feminist discourse on these subjects already existed at the time the video was created, even in non academic media, is irresponsible and reprehensible.
I don't feel that one can simultaneously identify how the system sucks for either gender, and direct people critical that system, or trying to build a better system, to only desire the idea of "equality" within that sucky system; as an extreme and nihilistic example, we're all equal in death, but that doesn't mean death is a (or the) solution to our problems, when it comes to discrimination. Feminism, even in its earliest days, was more about liberation of women from the social social roles, structures, laws, standards, et. al, which confined them. Suffrage was about liberating women, the pushes to enhance and renew the Violence Against Women Act (which, as a side note, has through these pushes strengthened protection of male victims of domestic violence), the symbolic acts of bra burning, protesting the commodification and objectification of women, the fight to give women greater control over their destiny and bodies via birth control and reproductive rights, normalization of lesbianism and therefore the normalization of the right of women to express their sexuality, and so many other examples of the history of Feminist movement and its victories are rooted in empowering and liberating women, and not rooted in the idea of simply making women equal to men. Defining Feminism to be a movement purely based around making women equal to men, limits its scope in such a way that one cannot possibly encompass the core issues or social pressures at play when discussing the (often intersecting) issues which result in discrimination or marginalization based on gender, and therefore would not in fact be able to make any meaningful strides towards any goal of justice.
You should have cited whatever evidence nudges your belief towards your being selected last for employment in that pecking order, not whether women are a majority or a minority in the world, which is unrelated to whether or not they are discriminated against or marginalized on various levels in, and in the events leading up to, the hiring process. As it stands your intuition on the topic is anecdotal, and I think misguided.
On a related note, many employers want veterans, but if you feel in any way that you've been discriminated against in a hiring situation based on your veteran status or anything related to your military service, such as a mental or physical injury, this is actually a fairly uncommon and serious issue, and you should use all of the legal tools that you are entitled to under USERRA. There are a lot of ****ty people out there who don't want to respect the contributions of US veterans, and discriminate against veterans either willingly or ignorantly.
While the individuals in the armed forces should be ready and prepared for any threat the nation may face, the minimum standards of the APFT test might not be the ones I'd point to as being the standards for those entering combat roles where life-or-death situations, or the metric I would use to determine if someone is fully fit and mentally & physically capable of ensuring a wounded comrade in full gear reaches safety, which is what basic combat training strives to prepare servicemen and women for.
As it stands, women are required to pass the same standards to graduate from Ranger school as men (
or hear it from the Rangers themselves). This has been confirmed and repeated by the Army, even after US Representative Steve Russell repeatedly demanded evidence that the Ranger school results, for the first class which included women, weren't fudged or the courses adulterated to assist women in any way.
I'm unclear what you mean when you say "Masculinism" as academically and in literature, the term 'Masculinist' is defined and used to refer to movements
which desire male dominance, an enforcement of a hierarchy over women, or clinging to stereotypes of social expectations of the male gender, which, from the context of the rest of your paragraph, you don't seem to think it means.
Edit: had to change the link to an example of the campaign since the URL contained blacklisted word patterns, also changed 1927 to 1929 as that's the actual date the UCR enacted its previous definition.
Edit 2: had to change the link to the Justice Department's website because its URL contained a blacklisted word pattern