[hyunmin]

When I watched the video and read the quotes, I didn't think someone on this kind of forum would take the other side.

Why would increasing numbers of female "breadwinners" put so many people over the line?

[Rei Murasame]

Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC has also convened a panel to discuss what has happened:

Conservative Men Get Spanked On Fox News
[youtube]3cqnejIfgP8[/youtube]

On her panel Harris-Perry has a bunch of people, but the one who sounded the most correct to me was Reshma Saujani. Skip to 8mins 52secs if you are impatient.

[Oxymoron]

Why would increasing numbers of female "breadwinners" put so many people over the line?

Hyun, Because that means children dont have mothers, and society at large suffers. Women can work, but their main priority should be Home Makers, Mothers, and Wives.

[Rei Murasame]

their main priority should be Home Makers, Mothers, and Wives.

Why? 'Home maker' just means deliberately unemployed loser who is not taking work seriously and is trying to cover over that fact by telling some silly story about how the livingroom curtains will get off the rails and go walking around by themselves if she isn't in the livingroom often enough to watch them.

Because guess who isn't at home during the day? That's right, children are not at home during the day, because children are at school.

[hyunmin]

their main priority should be Home Makers, Mothers, and Wives.

While I agree kids should have parents (both) around at the younger years, and at least one home for a few years of development, I don't see why a mother of a kid old enough to go to school would need a stay-home mother. And if she's working, there's a decent chance she's going to make more than her husband/boyfriend.

[work-in-progress]

Since this thread has been turned into the hotly contested issue of 40 years ago: should women with children be in the workforce? by the local patriarchs and control freaks, can we rephrase the question and ask why the average length of the workweek has increased over the decades for both men and women? In 1930, economist - John Maynard Keynes took a look at the improvements in productivity and predicted that continued technological progress would keep reducing the work week to 15 hours. If we were working a 15 hour work week today, would conservatives still have excuses for why women shouldn't be in the workforce? Even if it remained 40 hours, couldn't a work and/or income splitting system make it possible for both parents to both look after their children and go to work? Why does it have to be one or the other?

Let's review: in that golden, glorious era before the turn of the 20th century, when companies hired Pinkerton goon squads to suppress the rise of unions, working conditions in North America and Europe were equivalent to what we see now in Bangladesh and China. When unions were legalized, conditions slowly improved -- especially cutting the work week from 60, 70 or more hours....depending on what the boss wanted to extract, and gradually reduced to the 40 hour work week during the 1930's. Some very progressive employers....well at least one - Kelloggs, even tried to lower it further to a 4 day - 32 hour work week...but nobody followed suit, and Kelloggs had to eventually drop the 4 day work week also and fall in line with the rest of industry.

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes examined the trends in production, technological improvement, and predicted that within a 100 years, the average work week would be 15 hours....not much time left for that prediction, and we've been moving in the opposite direction, as almost every working person trying to keep up with the cost of living is aware of. So what went wrong? Why do we have to work longer and harder, even as we see corporate profits and CEO salaries on a steady, 40 year upswing? Women joined the full time work force and continued on after having children, and still, we're all working longer hours....or we lose the race! I can tell you that, from personal experience, that if you find your situation going from a two income household to a one income for whatever reasons, you pretty much have to move out of suburbia and into a neighbourhood with much lower real estate values. I'm not complaining personally, because the move that I dreaded 15 years ago, turned out to be better than staying where we were...but, for a lot of people these days, one job does not pay enough to put a roof over your head, support a family and maybe a few luxuries like keeping one car on the road in working condition.

Speaking of Keynes, and his dream of a 15 hour work week, the Guardian did a piece examining what went wrong, but typical for mainstream news analysis, they blame the average consumer (The desire to keep up with our richer peers drives us to work harder), rather than the corporate oligarchs who created modern consumer capitalism. Larry Elliot of the Guardian, finds lots of reasons to incentivise increased work, but none of those reasons mention the insidious effects of modern advertising and marketing. They only seem to notice that advertising can have harmful effects when the targets are children or young adults, such as a recent news story about the dramatic increase in binge drinking among teenage girls and young women. But it's never applied as a general rule to explain why so many people are so obsessed about buying more crap....even when it's crap they don't really need in the first place! That was one of the major explanations for that Great Depression of the 1930's -- lack of consumer demand. Back then, most people were frugal -- only bought what they needed, and looked to fix things and mend clothes rather than throw them away for new stuff. In today's world of impulsive, neurotic consumers, we can never have enough....and that's likely the major reason why all the improvements in productivity do not find a way to reducing work hours....just an excuse for more consumption.

I was going to say something before about the irony of nasty bitches like Megyn Kelly, once again discovering that conservatives have no more respect for white women than they do for blacks, latinos, immigrants, blue collar workers, gays etc., and the Republican agenda would strip away the privileges that came along with the rise of the 2nd wave feminist movement also. She's like a female version of Marco Rubio -- someone who wants to be part of an oppressive majority, and then discovering that they are actually on the periphery and not really part of the club -- sucked in bitch!

[Rich]

People in past times had no trouble consuming. They didn't need modern advertising. In fact ordinary people have always been at the heart of marketing. The small shop keeper and artisan has always been happy to sell their wares regardless of whether its good for the buyer. Its funny but I never see workers going on strike to demand that their employers reign in their marketing campaign.

Lefties want to live in their pathetic little fantasy world where all the faults in the world are die to evil Capitalists and corporations. Of course as stated Conservatives have their own pathetic little fantasy world where every-thing's the fault of evil Liberals or evil feminists. As if the growth of female primary earner households are the fault of a few bra burning feminists.

[Rainbow Crow]

Necessity fuels all things, when men get the idea that they don't have to work, many of them will stop working. Whereas the women having children have to work. It's actually a vicious cycle... first women work, then men decide they don't have to work, government spending racks up to subsidize the women, but then the women refuse to work as well once the government pays them just for having children. Then, you get huge portions of the population not working and everyone expects something from the government?

As this cycle plays out you get people trying to militarize the war of the sexes and people who conclude that not having children at all is the smart thing to do. Unless we invent artificial wombs, traditionalist countries will be much better off after the world's wealth is equalized across nations, due to the further development of the third world's economies. The rise of China, India and Brazil and the fall of the less industrious Eurozone members is the beginning of this.

[SE23]

Necessity fuels all things, when men get the idea that they don't have to work, many of them will stop working. Whereas the women having children have to work. It's actually a vicious cycle... first women work, then men decide they don't have to work, government spending racks up to subsidize the women, but then the women refuse to work as well once the government pays them just for having children. Then, you get huge portions of the population not working and everyone expects something from the government?

As this cycle plays out you get people trying to militarize the war of the sexes and people who conclude that not having children at all is the smart thing to do. Unless we invent artificial wombs, traditionalist countries will be much better off after the world's wealth is equalized across nations, due to the further development of the third world's economies. The rise of China, India and Brazil and the fall of the less industrious Eurozone members is the beginning of this.

Again a very gynocentric view, why should a man work or marry a woman who can leave him on the grounds of dissatisfaction and still pursue child support from him after ?.
There is too much of a risk for men to marry modern women who have the safety net of big business and government funding to back them up, whether they feel like they want something different.

If you want to look at anthropology and biology in this point, you can say that a woman's uterus has already placed her as having a higher status position in society, enough so that men would make concessions for her (Women and children go first, blah blah). A man not falling back on his reproductive capabilities which are in abundance and hence the demand is less, needed to develop his societal perceived value by achieving high status and hence demand by channeling through his masculine traits to develop a successful career or trade.

Perhaps this is the reason, why males are more likely to commit suicide after a relationship break up or divorce...

Back to topic, this importance of male status, again displays why less men are marrying; women are not going to marry or make love to a man who they don't respect, they will be unlikely to marry a man who has an occopcation that is of a lower status than themselves. The father/husband figure has been tarnished by popular culture and feminism, why would a man wish to look at himself in the mirror at the age of forty, to see a Ray Barone or Homer Simpson. With British MP's stating that a father's role is expendable and even obsolete, it's no wonder why men have to be mooks in order to identify themselves with this role.

The more women push forward with their careers, the lower pool of "good men" are left, as their expectations increases.
Also not forgetting that men aren't soulless slave drones, and have preferences themselves, are unlikely to go for the post modern women, who has a plus 30 count of sexual partners, expectation for the man to stay at home, and be disposable at their whim, and make concessions even though she is not fulfilling her end of the traditional marriage contract.

In regards to traditionalist cultures, yes I believe they will be far better off in the event of an economic downturn or in the overall grand scheme of things. At some points you cannot rely on government intervention or big businesses, and this is when traditional family/communities come up at top trumps, it was the case before welfare entitlements, and it will be the case after them as well. Working class people no that traditional family structures are the best, despite what the liberal intellectuals which to state otherwise behind their gated communities. Unfortunately the traditional family has been crucified by propaganda from feminists, christian reformists, marxists and even capitalists. Sad state of affairs

[SE23]

That's true, and there's the additional problem that it is still mostly men who are the historians - of both recent and ancient history, as well as the anthropologists and archaeologists who tell us what is significant about what ancient peoples were doing.

So, for example, almost every book you pick up about paleo and modern hunter/gatherers will tell you almost exclusively what the men are doing; not what the women are doing. About 30 years ago, a female anthropologist (I forget the name) noticed that, not only were the women doing most of the gathering of plant foods, but were also catching a significant portion of the meat -- mostly by snaring small game. What had happened historically is that the anthropologists who were out in the field were just following the men on the big game hunts and never bothered to make an actual estimate of who was really providing most of the food for the group. Men were NOT the breadwinners in traditional societies. The notion that man is supposed to be the breadwinner is a modern contrivance, and a social arrangement that didn't actually last very long if we are looking at the full scope of history. It's more that it is a founding part of the myth in modern christian fundamentalism, than it has to do with the way real people lived. Even when the modern feminist era began with Betty Friedan half a century ago, she got a lot of flack from black women and women from lower economic levels than her, that there was no such thing as 'the idle housewife' below her upper middle class lifestyle.

I can't say I completely agree, you trace back all religious and teachings back from Ancient civilisations, the Summerians, Greeks, Romans and at the reach towards their peaks, they stipulated strict "gender roles". In some back water swamp villages in Papa New Guinea and South America, where they still practice canibalism, then perhaps these roles may have been tampered with, but ultimately the successful civilisations weren't of a matriarchal nature.

Although something which feminists deny, as it doesn't fit into their victim ideology, is that female power is just as real as male power and has always been present, albeit subtle and not as overt as the masculine kind. When you look at the female individuals such as Cleopatra, Eva Peron, Elizabeth the first, they were all strong powerful women who didn't resort to undermining masculinity or denouncing their feminimity. Female power has been able to send men in the droves of thousands and even millions to their deaths, if it led to the possibility of gaining respect from women. I can see it to this day, with women being able to get away with murder (even literally in some cases) but their female prowess has led to them getting off on the grounds of chivalrous judges. It's only benevolent sexism" when it doesn't suit the feminist argument.

There isn't a secret army of invisible men behind every history book, men have played up to women's expectations for decades, in the name of chivalry and preferential treatment. Men were expected by society to make concessions on behalf of women in order to allow the act of reproduction to take place. This led to women achieving a victim status, which feminists have continued to exploit to this day, which also led to a restriction on the social mobility of females as individuals. So this idea that men were purely self serving and out to spite women, is just feminists projecting, men never had the need or any purpose to gain from doing that, no matter how much feminist revisionist material you read.

Women had played a role in doing some small tasks, outside of the home domain, but really !? is their expected to be a medal for that, if you were living in an agrarian society, it was necessary that everyone pulled their work in for survival, not out of some passive aggressive power games, this is not Cher's Beaches !
Agrarian societies being heavily based around practical and self reliance and self dependence, saw men being expected to be the main source of protection and providence, they were the donkeys that needed to plough the fields and the women were the humans behind with the whip.

[work-in-progress]

I can't say I completely agree, you trace back all religious and teachings back from Ancient civilisations, the Summerians, Greeks, Romans and at the reach towards their peaks, they stipulated strict "gender roles".

How far back exactly, can you trace all the dogmas and doctrines of all religions? By "strict gender roles", are you saying that every religion teaches the exact same gender roles for men and women? Because that is flat out wrong! When it comes to any texts stipulating strict gender roles, you can't find written texts that can be translated, that date back prior to the Hammurabi Codex....which was the forerunner of most of our religious mythologies. And, the gender roles of men and women, even in the early civilizations depended a lot on how the family life was structured. Did girls who were married, have to move off into the house of her new husband, as is still the norm today in traditional patriarchal societies? Or did the man have to leave home and live with his wife's family? Because that difference tells a whole lot about how much power women could have in the society.

The general transition from matriarchies to patriarchies is evidenced by the reduced role and importance of goddesses, and then there complete eradication later. If we go back into paleohistory, the only religious practice that is hinted at, based on art work, is goddess worship...likely the mother goddess "Venus" figurines date back as far as 40,000 years ago. The mother goddess was more important than any gods if we go by the numbers. The transition to patriarchal societies eventually led to the diminishing of the role of the female, so that Yahweh's wife - Asherah, was eliminated when the Israelites became strict monotheists with a sky father...but no mother!
[youtube]5sw-NFvueK8[/youtube]

In some back water swamp villages in Papa New Guinea and South America, where they still practice canibalism, then perhaps these roles may have been tampered with, but ultimately the successful civilisations weren't of a matriarchal nature.

Is there any point to your attempt to smear primitive hunter/gatherers, who are almost non-existent today, because of habitat loss? Successful civilizations! Read something about the Harappan Civilization of the Indus Valley, which was at least as successful as Sumer, and, although the ancient Sanskrit writings haven't been translated, other evidence indicates that family structure in the largest city - Mohenjo Daro, was matriarchal during that period...until later invasions by Indo-Europeans, who obliterated everything and established patriarchal systems.

It's a big subject, and I've gone into more detail than I likely should have, but there is a lot of history that most people were never taught in school, and never learned anything about afterwards. That and a lot of the work done in anthropology deep sixes all of the notions about what's traditional and what isn't. Human societies have developed all kinds of unique customs and living arrangements, depending on environment and outside pressures, like the threat of attack from other groups.

Although something which feminists deny, as it doesn't fit into their victim ideology, is that female power is just as real as male power and has always been present, albeit subtle and not as overt as the masculine kind. When you look at the female individuals such as Cleopatra, Eva Peron, Elizabeth the first, they were all strong powerful women who didn't resort to undermining masculinity or denouncing their feminimity. Female power has been able to send men in the droves of thousands and even millions to their deaths, if it led to the possibility of gaining respect from women. I can see it to this day, with women being able to get away with murder (even literally in some cases) but their female prowess has led to them getting off on the grounds of chivalrous judges. It's only benevolent sexism" when it doesn't suit the feminist argument.

Horseshit! Women who rise to power in a male-dominated culture are mostly going to be the ones who act like men, and try to outdo the men when it comes to being ruthless and acting with naked aggression. Whether we're talking about the nasty bitches who rose up the corporate ladder like Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, or the female warhawks in politics like Hillary Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Golda Meir, or Indira Gandhi, the women heads of state...or aspiring to be like Hilary, they were in a game where being feminine would mean being voted out of the job! So, talking tough, and being quick to go to war was key to their success. The examples you mention are a joke! Cleopatra...we really can't separate fact from fiction, except that Roman writers described her as scheming and manipulative...dependent on Rome to hold on to power. Eva Peron....I'm not really into musicals! And Elizabeth appears to be a formidable queen....likely England's last competent monarch, but once again, she was a woman who had to play a man's game. If we ever get to the point of taking control of democracy back from the corporations, if the future gives us more than the odd female politician and provides something closer to an equal balance, we might see women leaders who don't have to act like men in drag.

There isn't a secret army of invisible men behind every history book, men have played up to women's expectations for decades, in the name of chivalry and preferential treatment. Men were expected by society to make concessions on behalf of women in order to allow the act of reproduction to take place. This led to women achieving a victim status, which feminists have continued to exploit to this day, which also led to a restriction on the social mobility of females as individuals. So this idea that men were purely self serving and out to spite women, is just feminists projecting, men never had the need or any purpose to gain from doing that, no matter how much feminist revisionist material you read.

More horseshit! Who are the victims of violence and sex crimes, and who are the perpetrators? You're saying that women should just shut up and take it in exchange for bringing back patronizing customs associated with chivalry?

Women had played a role in doing some small tasks, outside of the home domain, but really !? is their expected to be a medal for that, if you were living in an agrarian society, it was necessary that everyone pulled their work in for survival, not out of some passive aggressive power games, this is not Cher's Beaches !
Agrarian societies being heavily based around practical and self reliance and self dependence, saw men being expected to be the main source of protection and providence, they were the donkeys that needed to plough the fields and the women were the humans behind with the whip.

That is too insane and ridiculous for comment!

[Pants-of-dog]

So, other than disappointing men who want women to be home-makers and mothers and nothing else, do working women actually harm anyone?

[JRS1]

Because guess who isn't at home during the day? That's right, children are not at home during the day, because children are at school.

Kids are woken up, cleaned, fed, dressed and packed off or dropped off to school (7.30- 9.00). They are given packed lunches or or some go home for a real meal prepared by mam (or dad) (11.30 - 12.30) then they come home around 3.30pm when they need to be picked up and looked after until going to bed. (3.00 - 8.30). Say 2.5 hours + 5 hours = 7.5 hours. * 5 days = 37.5 hours.

In between the house needs cleaning, the bills need paying the shopping needs doing, the tea needs to be made, the house needs to be kept etc. (9.00 - 11.30) + (12.30 - 3.00) = 5 hours.

I'm not against working women, far from it. Nor do I think the "home maker" has to be the woman. But the idea that housewives (and husbands) do nothing all day isn't true. Its essentially a split shift, and the ones that make the real difference to the household are the ones that put the hours in between their apparent working hours.

The issue here is for the couples in question, is whether the additional money earned is worth the additional stress on the relationship and the family. If they decide it isnt, then Im not sure what your opinion as to how hard she/he is working or not matters. ( You are on a liberal capitalist slope right there, Rei ).

If you earn enough or have plenty of cheap labour to exploit, you can employ a nanny/ maid. Most cant.

[SE23]

Domestic violence cases show that women are commonly the instigators of violence in the first place, difference is women are more keen to use weapons rather than their own fists, and that men's complaints are taken less seriously and they themselves are less likely to come forward, with a justice system that plays preferential treatment towards women. "cases of substantiated abuse jumped from 960 in 2005-06 to 1505 in 2007-08. In 2005-06, mothers committed 312 cases, while fathers were responsible for 165." Against pre notions that fathers are more likely to commit abuse or violence against others, shows that women intact are more likely to instigate child abuse.

Yes female goddesses were worshipped, whats your point ? They symbolised fertility and creation, which was essentially what esteem females as having an important role in any civilisation. Similarly we worship the female today we see the beautiful woman as being a goddess, attractive women who can't even sing for sh*t or who have no talent what so ever, being paid by the millions and held in high regard by popular society simply because she is beautiful and a representation of ideal high fertility.

Yes civilisations had accepted matriarchal structures and this usually when they became interiorally destitute and eventually overthrown and overrun by a more dominant masculine race or group from distant lands. The cult of Isthar is an example of how female sexual liberation led to a passive male population who couldn't find the men from overseas. It seems to be a pre exquisite with the higher the civilisation becomes, the more idealistic and less practical the people become, this eventually leads to ignorant outsides who act on accordance to the laws of nature, taking over and looting these self made elysium.

As for the dynamic female individuals, i can guarantee that they wouldn't have been able to get away with as half of the sh*t they had gotten away with if they were men. Women have the upper hand in manipulating males, and the common woman has the skill up her sleeves, the smart ones throughout history used this ability from political reasons, rather than petty mind games and whimsical relative pleasure.


Again you are confusing female power with male power, and ruthlessness for being a masculine trait, as if women are the opposite to this. Well i suppose any believer of patriarchy wouldn't be able to grasp the concept of women taking responsibility for instigating violence, without blaming a nearby male.

You have to believe in a separate natures or don't believe in them in what so ever.
If you believe man has a nature, which women have to adhere to, in order to become a successful individual, then maybe man's nature is what is needed to make things happen. Look at most of the great thinkers throughout time who were mostly men. Men made the scientific discoveries and technology which enabled safe child labour and technology which empowered women, although they are meant to be oppressors ... lol it doesn't add up.

If you are to have true equality, then feminists should shut up and "take it like men". If you are not going to make conessions on behalf of men, then don't expect men to make concessions on behalf of you, if you are going to act like men then accept the responsibilities that come along with such behaviour. It seems as time goes on more women are becoming less happy, and this has all been in accordance with the rise of feminism.

We live in a pointless consumerist society, where everyone wants everything but at the same time they are not prepared to put the work in and live in accordance to being responsible, we are living in the land of should. People pick partners almost as if they are shopping for food, it's no longer based on long terms goals or keeping something alive to help each other, its more based around who can give me the quickest fit of fulfilment and pleasure for this short period of time.

[Rei Murasame]

JRS, I don't think your schedule is realistic assessment of what people actually do.

Kids are woken up, cleaned, fed, dressed and packed off or dropped off to school (7.30- 9.00).

This can be solved by getting the child to school early. For example, the child can arrive at 0800. Which is what actually happens.

They are given packed lunches or or some go home for a real meal prepared by mam (or dad) (11.30 - 12.30)

No one goes home for a 'real meal'. That simply does not happen. They might go out for lunch or order lunch at best, but they do not go home.

then they come home around 3.30pm

That also does not happen. I have never ever seen a child get home at that time. At the earliest, you can expect them to reach home by 1700, and they are capable of unlocking a door themselves if no one is there at that time.

Speaking for myself, when I was a child I would be probably be anywhere except home at 1530. The earliest I'd be taking off my uniform would be 1800.

looked after until going to bed. (3.00 - 8.30)

Bedtime is usually 2200, and I don't think that looking after them is that difficult.

In between the house needs cleaning

What needs to be cleaned? If no-one is there during the day, and people are tidy in the evening, there's nothing extensive to clean.

the bills need paying

Direct debit.

the shopping needs doing

Options:

• Do your shopping monthly on a Saturday.
• Do your shopping weekly at a weekend.
• Make your online order be over £40 and have Sainsbury's deliver it if you can't be bothered to drive there, the charge will be £2.

the tea needs to be made

I have no answer to this one other than to say if you want tea to be always warm and waiting, you need a maid.

the house needs to be kept etc.

Declare that 'cleaning hour' lasts for one hour every two days, between the hours of 2000 and 2100. Everyone who happens to be at home at that time must run around and deal with any irregularities in the house during that time.

But the idea that housewives (and husbands) do nothing all day isn't true.

Okay, they can indeed find things to do if they take deliberate steps to be inefficient and make the worst use of time. But I've shown in this post that it is inefficient.

The issue here is for the couples in question, is whether the additional money earned is worth the additional stress on the relationship and the family. If they decide it isnt, then Im not sure what your opinion as to how hard she/he is working or not matters.

Because we have to have standards. The excuses that people used in the 1600s cannot work in 2013. Any woman who can't come up with these solutions to problems, is up to shenanigans.

____________________

If you are not going to make conessions on behalf of men, then don't expect men to make concessions on behalf of you, if you are going to act like men then accept the responsibilities that come along with such behaviour.

Exactly. That's also my position. I don't expect anything from any man.

I disagree with you on everything else, but on that issue I agree with you completely.

[Decky]

That also does not happen. I have never ever seen a child get home at that time. At the earliest, you can expect them to reach home by 1700, and they are capable of unlocking a door themselves if no one is there at that time.

Yes they do.

Maybe rich kids who have the cash to go and go things after school don't get home until late (presumably they are going to get caviar or brush up on their polo) but everyone else goes home after most days (either their own home or a friends house). Even on the days they are out all afternoon/ evening they will most likely nip home to change out of their uniform before going to play out.

Rei's privileged upbringing and total lack of knowledge about everyday British life for those of us who are not rich strikes again.

[work-in-progress]

Domestic violence cases show that women are commonly the instigators of violence in the first place, difference is women are more keen to use weapons rather than their own fists, and that men's complaints are taken less seriously and they themselves are less likely to come forward, with a justice system that plays preferential treatment towards women. "cases of substantiated abuse jumped from 960 in 2005-06 to 1505 in 2007-08. In 2005-06, mothers committed 312 cases, while fathers were responsible for 165." Against pre notions that fathers are more likely to commit abuse or violence against others, shows that women intact are more likely to instigate child abuse.

I've seen enough bullshit statistics from so called "mens rights activists" groups online to know where this stuff comes from! They will take a case of a man violently assaulting his wife, who was pushed or slapped, as meaning she's the instigator. In law, and in common sense, the capacity to inflict violence is a determining factor regarding who is considered at fault. I can tell you, just from my personal experience from boxing during my younger days, that I have a lot more capacity to cause injury than the average guy even today. So, if I knock someone out with one punch, I could get charged with aggravated assault even if I was hit first. If you violently retaliate with force against someone who is not physically capable of injuring you, you are at fault. It is also far more common for men to be using weapons against their wives in domestic disputes than the reverse. The cases where a woman has pulled a knife or a gun on her husband have almost always been proceeded by the man using weapons against her.

Yes female goddesses were worshipped, whats your point ? They symbolised fertility and creation, which was essentially what esteem females as having an important role in any civilisation. Similarly we worship the female today we see the beautiful woman as being a goddess, attractive women who can't even sing for sh*t or who have no talent what so ever, being paid by the millions and held in high regard by popular society simply because she is beautiful and a representation of ideal high fertility.

The point is that you started with a brief, upside down version of ancient history. The real history of ancient times that is mostly ignored in academia, except among a handful of feminist historians and anthropologists is that the first civilizations were matrilocal, and likely matriarchal -- not patriarchal. And the most likely reason why we ended up with entrenched patriarchies that gradually took over the world in recent centuries, started out because it was the family structure of the nomadic, herding barbarians from Central Asia that invaded the early civilizations. So, if you want to source patriarchy, it is in barbarism, not civilization! And it became entrenched and grew to overrun every other culture in the world because of its aggression and its predilection for using violence. And, we can no longer afford to be ruled like this in our overcrowded, resource-poor world. Keeping patriarchy and all its baggage is part of the recipe for disaster and extinction of the human race entirely. So, I see it as an important issue to set straight.

Yes civilisations had accepted matriarchal structures and this usually when they became interiorally destitute and eventually overthrown and overrun by a more dominant masculine race or group from distant lands. The cult of Isthar is an example of how female sexual liberation led to a passive male population who couldn't find the men from overseas. It seems to be a pre exquisite with the higher the civilisation becomes, the more idealistic and less practical the people become, this eventually leads to ignorant outsides who act on accordance to the laws of nature, taking over and looting these self made elysium.

This is part of what I was talking about above! The conquerers get to write the histories, so the barbarians come in to a relatively peaceful society and institute their oppressive gods and oppressive hierarchies and demand young men sign up to wage war on every surrounding nation....and after they taken over the world, now what?

Again you are confusing female power with male power, and ruthlessness for being a masculine trait, as if women are the opposite to this. Well i suppose any believer of patriarchy wouldn't be able to grasp the concept of women taking responsibility for instigating violence, without blaming a nearby male.

Tell me if you have any evidence that any "ruthless" women have done this: War Rape -- using rape as a tool of war.
War rape and gender

Susan Brownmiller was the first historian to attempt an overview of rape in war with documentation and theory.[5] Brownmiller's thesis is that "War provides men with the perfect psychological backdrop to give vent to their contempt for women. The maleness of the military—the brute power of weaponry exclusive to their hands, the spiritual bonding of men at arms, the manly discipline of orders given and orders obeyed, the simple logic of the hierarchical command—confirms for men what they long suspect—that women are peripheral to the world that counts." She writes that rape accompanies territorial advance by the winning side in land conflicts as one of the spoils of war, and that "Men who rape are ordinary Joes, made unordinary by entry into the most exclusive male-only club in the world."[6]

You have to believe in a separate natures or don't believe in them in what so ever.
If you believe man has a nature, which women have to adhere to, in order to become a successful individual, then maybe man's nature is what is needed to make things happen. Look at most of the great thinkers throughout time who were mostly men. Men made the scientific discoveries and technology which enabled safe child labour and technology which empowered women, although they are meant to be oppressors ... lol it doesn't add up.

If you are to have true equality, then feminists should shut up and "take it like men". If you are not going to make conessions on behalf of men, then don't expect men to make concessions on behalf of you, if you are going to act like men then accept the responsibilities that come along with such behaviour. It seems as time goes on more women are becoming less happy, and this has all been in accordance with the rise of feminism.

First part is fabricated history, where women were excluded from participating because they were denied access to higher education. When they did make important discoveries in science, a man gets the credit and the woman is ignored -- like Nobel Prize winning astronomer - Edwin Hubble, who made his discovery back in about 1920 that the universe was expanding, because his female assistant noticed that a newly discovered pulsating star (Cephid Variables) varied in intensity, so examining the time needed for the star to go through its stages of bright to dim and bright again, combined with the star's magnitude, would make it possible to tell how far away these distant stars were. So in essence, Hubble's assistant solved the problem of determining how far away objects in space were that were too far away to determine by using the parallax method (comparing position in the sky during opposite seasons), and Hubble got the Nobel Prize and all the credit for making the discovery. This is the kind of system that you are fawning over!

Second part, I'm a man, and I believe in making concessions, as does an ideological ally here on this topic. If there were a few angry feminists here making the arguments, I don't think we would have to try to do the heavy lifting on a subject that should be obvious who's right and who's wrong.

[Rei Murasame]

Yes they do.

Only if they are seriously lame. I mean, can you imagine if a kid was like "I'm going home, everyone", at 1530? Going where? They ought to have a really good reason for that, otherwise I would not have known how to even respond to that.

Maybe rich kids who have the cash to go and go things after school don't get home until late

Just use your pocket money. It's not actually that difficult. Assuming you have an extra-curricular activity or extra lessons, you do that, and then you go and wander around in town and mess around a bit, maybe go to an arcade and annoy the boys, careen up and down on your bikes, maybe go to Rileys (plenty of places like that let juniors in) and waste some money, and then go home.

We didn't have to be 'privileged' to come up with these ideas. All we had to do is think, "how can I get rid of at least three hours without getting in trouble?"

Now, I understand that some parents don't trust their children to behave themselves with pocket money. This is why if you really have concerns, you can split it so that a small amount of money is given to them as cash, and that larger amount on a pre-paid card. This enables the parent to spy on the child's spending by looking at that pre-paid card's logs, if they really are wondering what is happening.

Even on the days they are out all afternoon/ evening they will most likely nip home to change out of their uniform before going to play out.

Why would they do that? Staying in uniform is actually easier and it saves you the effort of having to go home.

Also, looking back now, I feel that we probably avoided a lot of trouble by staying in uniform as well, since I suspect that creepy people are less likely to mess with youngsters if they are blatantly walking around in school uniform. This is because hardly anyone wants to be seen as 'that guy in the street chatting-up school children in the evening'. The fact that "this person is a child and is thus in a different reality", becomes unavoidable. So it all works out for the best.

[Oxymoron]

Pants , they are harming society by throwing of the balance and backbone that women have provided as Home makers, Mothers and Wives. No I am not saying women should stay at home, I am saying the home and her family must be her priorities, and a Mans priority is to provide for the family the resource needs. Basically Woman is the manager, and man is the work force.

[Rei Murasame]

The only excuse that a woman would have for needing to micromanage every aspect of every family member's life, is if the entire family consists of completely dysfunctional people who can't keep themselves out of trouble when not being watched by her.

A proper 'manager' should be able to steer a family without having to be physically present at all times, Oxy. A mark of good parenting is when you have raised children that know how to go from point A to point B without being watched and can do that without creating any serious problems along the way.