But, but - patriarchy! (Girls think they're smarter)

[Spider]

[Spider]

[Hyperion]

At this point feminism is a destructive force in the realm of gender politics. I am not a bigot. I'm also not ignorant about the many shitty things society expects of women. I'm very progressive on gender and sex. There are clear differences between the brains of most men and women due to hormones and genetics, but this discrepancy is overblown to the extent many parents will rip a pink toy out of a boy's hand to save their child from being viewed as 'weird.' Most people are so stuck up on black and white that they don't realize the scope of human identity is quite complex. Even many liberals I know are caught up on classification so much that they can't see sexual orientation outside of "straight, gay, or bisexual." I know lesbians who only want to date butch-looking females; I know men who prefer women in most situations but have secret fantasies about effeminate male partners.

But like I said - feminism is so wrapped up in demonizing a perceived patriarchy that it completely undermines the necessary steps for building a reasonable, multi-faceted perspective. For example, go to an average feminist at NOW or Jezebel and inquire into how a transsexual or gay male benefits from their sex when a straight female is considered 'normal.' This is just another debate that illustrates the weakened position of feminism.

The comparison between racism and sexism really ticks me off, too. Gender roles developed out of economic necessity and were not forced barbarically. The Neolithic Revolution favored male economic might in the labor process. I'm not a die-hard Marxist, but the theory of value applies here. Women were pregnant for most of their adult years. Tending to farms - prior to the invention of garden tools - was tremendous work. As land became a commodity, men became the primary work-force. This resulted in the laws of property being defined by masculinity vs household duties becoming the realm of femininity. Racism on the other hand emerged from ingrained prejudice and resulted in mass-starvation, genocide, warfare, etc.

[Homer]

[The Dharma Bum]

Consider this; the archaic social protocol that we are currently calling "patriarchy" might be diminishing to all individuals who come into into contact with it regardless of which segment of society controls it.

[PoS]

[Spider]

[wormwood]

[The Comrade]

[The Dharma Bum]

The Spanish were more into converting and intermarrying with the indigenous populations they conquered than they were in looking at them as animals and outright enslaving them.

I don't view the Spanish conquests as being particularly racist in nature. Certainly much less so that the English or Dutch conquests were. I think the Spanish viewed themselves as being morally superior rather than racially superior in the manner of the colonization our own culture sprang from. Their impetus for conquest grew from a desire to propagate their culture rather than from an utterly ruthless commercial nature.

There was a period of time during the Belgian exploitation of Congo when baskets of severed human hands served as currency. It just doesn't really get in more brutal than that.