Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ Polonius3, you suggest the state should pick up part of the salary costs for women who are on maternity leave. I'm not sure whether you live I Poland or somewhere else, or whether such a scheme Iain operatin wherever it is that you live. But where I am, the UK, we do indeed have such a scheme. It's called Statutory Maternity Pay (SMP). If there isn't a similar provision in your country, perhaps you would care took forces with the nation's feminists to campaign for one? Who knows, you might even choose to attend their next meet-up to see whether they have any other good initiatives you could support...

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ Paulina and Rozumiemnic, thanks for your kind comments - and apologies for some of the dinosaurs still roaming theEarth :-)

@ Foreigner4, you come across as very bitter. What have feminists, or women, ever done to you?

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ Paulina, all the injustices you've listed pi$$ me off too. And what pi$$es me off almost as much is people who don't give a fcuk about these horrors, or deny they even happen, and call themselves men. What kind of man could possibly accept mistreatment of women?

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ Foreigner4, as I've said several times, you and other anti-feminists have provided some examples of some people who have made statements or advocated policies, in the name of feminism, that could appear extreme or anti-male. Absolutely. I don't deny it. But as I've explained, also several times, there is no official 'membership list' for feminism and no criteria for inclusion or exclusion, and most feminists would not agree with the examples that have been cited.

Your main criticism of feminism seems to be that women have already achieved equality and what they are pushing for now is privileged treatment for women, at women's expense. With respect, you live in a different world than most of us if you think women have the best deal currently, overall, compared with men.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

+1

Foreigner4, Zimmy, Kondzior and others, you surely can't disagree with these principles, can you? Or do you seriously think women are inferior and should be oppressed?

As Paulina says, plenty of men want equality for women. In fact, I'd suggest it's impossible to be a straight man with any kind of feelings for women without wanting it. How can you profess to love someone while also looking down on her or wanting her to be without rights or respect?

Love / Adultery- Is it ok for Polish women [41]

I'm surprised that a man lucky enough to be dating or married to a Polish woman would want to be unfaithful.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ Zimmy, you ask why I haven't responded to the various extreme statements made by feminists that you've provided links to on this site. The reason is straightforward: I have pointed out that there are a huge number of people who call themselves feminists, and they don't all agree about everything. The cases you've highlighted are extreme, and most feminists do not agree with the views expressed. Also, bear on mind that the media tend to focus on these examples and as a result feminism is sometimes stigmatised, to the extent that some women are uncomfortable with the feminist label, even though they are strong advocates for gender equality.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


The best kind of woman :-).


I found your description of your mother's story very touching. She deserves her new life; I hope she is happy now :-).

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


OK... so those of us who've grown up in Western democracies have a shrivelled walnut for part of the brain, resulting in us becoming left-wing liberals and our societies floundering, whereas people who grew up with privations under communism grow stronger and eventually take over the world?

I don't know whether Stalin and his successors shared your shrivelled-brain theory, but when communism and capitalism last went head to head in the West, the obese, flatulent Americans beat the emaciated Russians based on the innate superiority of their economic system. We in the UK, and you in Poland, never really bought into the extremes of either ideology, but nowadays are finding a consensus in social democracy, which is probably the best compromise between incentives to produce and a humanitarian safety net.

Meanwhile, in Asia, many North Koreans are stunted due to a lack of food (their corpulent leader and his cronies aside), while those in the South have as many Maccy Ds and KFCs as they can keep down. They also have one of the most productive economies in the world, which has given them huge successes in industries such as shipbuilding and, increasingly, consumer electronics. Do they all have shrunken brains?

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


In that case, I'm definitely a feminist :-).

Seriously, any man who doesn't see the need to share the domestic duties doesn't deserve to share his life with a woman. And if that's the case he'll have to do all the work, not just half. And also be very lonely.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

I've been doing some background reading into feminism in Poland. It seems that attitudes to the concept may be affected for some by the country's history, ie some people don't like feminism because they associate it with communism, the pre-1989 era and the notion of forcing women to work while they have young children, or to do jobs they didn't want to equalise the numbers.

Maybe I'm reading too much into this but I wonder whether this explains some of the antipathy? Equally, I'm conscious that feminism in the Anglo-American world has been associated with individualism, which may explain why some of us are in favour of it, without ascribing to left-wing ideals.

Could there be some truth in my theory? Or is it baloney? I'd be intrigued to know who here is from where. I'll go first: as my username suggests, I'm British.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ f stop, I like your sentence too :-). And I think you are right. While men may have more muscular strength (on average), women are stronger in other ways. You've suggested greater emotional strength; I'd add greater ability to withstand pain, lower susceptibility to genetic diseases, less inclined toward self-destructive activities, and longer-living.

@ kondzior, I don't think it's accurate to imply that all feminists are leftists. I support many aspects of feminist thinking, despite being broadly right of centre. I'm a libertarian who believes that the job of the state is to create an environment in which everyone can maximise her or his potential, and it seems to me self-evident that this requires the elimination of barriers where expel from specific groups face unequal treatment or opportunities.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ Jon: 'Even straight women can make good soldiers'. So women who want to go into the army are probably gay?

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


'Total doom'? Are you sure your misogyny isn't tripping over into paranoia here?

Bear in mind the importance of averages. Yes, the average man is stronger than the average woman, but the strongest women are a lot stronger than the weakest men. So there are plenty of women with sufficient strength to perform the most physically demanding roles in the military, and plenty of men who lack it.

Also, we get our (on average) greater physical strength from our higher testosterone levels. Testosterone is also associated with aggression. Contrary to initial appearances, aggression is not a valued commodity in the armed forces, because it leads to impaired judgement. Nothing is more highly valued in the forces than being able to keep a calm head in a crisis.

And finally, as f stop has pointed out, the true victors in war are those who are smart enough to avoid it. Consider how many wars have taken place in history, the terrible consequences not only for the immediate victims and their families but also in terms of the resources that could have been deployed improving human civilization. Almost all of those wars were made by men, not women. And you still think we're superior?

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


I assume if you're ever unfortunate enough to get leukemia you won't be availing yourself of the cure developed by a Polish woman. She's female, so it couldn't possibly be as good as a treatment developed by a man, right?

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ kondzior, your outrageous claims about the unsuitability of women to the military fail on at least two counts. First, while women may, on average, not be as strong or have as much stamina as men, not everyone is average. Some women are more suited to roles requiring strength and stamina than some men. Second, it is wrong to assume that such characteristics are required for all military roles. There are all kinds of roles in the forces and some of them require exceptional mental or interpersonal strengths, rather than physical ones.

Fnally, women such as the Polish F-16 pilot who win such positions despite social pressures and the remaining bigots in society who make it difficult for them deserve better than being denigrated and belittled.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

Thanks :-). I blame it on having watched Top Gun at an impressionable age...

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


I guess so. In my defence, I'm on a mission to persuade some people here that feminists are likeable, desirable women and not ugly man-haters :-)

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


Is it just me, or is there something rather sexy about female pilots? Especially Polish ones...

Not only is there the woman in this article, a military pilot, but I once flew with Ryanair and one of the pilots was a young woman who (judging by her name) hailed from Poland. In her smart uniform and hat she looked amazing :-).

I'm guessing some people here will say they're freaks and should be at home baking for their husbands and kids...

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ kondzior, I'm really not sure where to start in responding to your latest stream of consciousness. The best I can say is that if your aim is to argue for the innate intellectual superiority of males, it ain't working pal.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ Zimmy, I think it's true that men are over-represented at the top of the IQ range - but also at the bottom. Overall, women outperform us in intelligence tests in most developed countries.

BTW, it has been suggested that very high IQ scores - which require very high performance in the maths test - correlate closely to being somewhere on the Asperger's/autism spectrum. Men outnumber women heavily for those conditions. People with Asperger's or autism can find it difficult to work constructively in teams, which may make it hard for them to deploy their on-paper intelligence. So I don't see the over-representation of men at the very top of the IQ range as taking away from the overall point that women are more intelligent than us and are accelerating ahead of us, or that women have greater potential than us, which has historically been held back by social and biological factors.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


f stop rocks :-).

It's true that in the past, some tests showed men as having higher IQs. But there are social factors at work, such as differences in education and expectations. As these have reduced over time, so the performance of girls and women has overtaken us. Given that the pressures still exist, I would suggest that the inherent mental superiority of women over men is probably greater than tests currently show, and that the trend of female IQ results improving faster than male will continue.

Sorry guys, but the days of claiming to be superior to women and using this to marginalise and oppress them are over.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

Polonius, I can't speak for Harry, but I believe in full equality of rights, opportunity, status and respect between men and women. That does not mean we have to be the same, or do the same jobs. But it does mean that if a woman is able to perform roles in which men are currently the majority of workers, she should be able to do so. Not just by being permitted by law to do so, but also by being protected from discrimination, and also brought up in a culture that says that doing that kind of work is not unfeminine or that women are incapable of doing it.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


It depends what you mean by 'equal in the eyes of the law'. If that were exactly true then any woman wanting to have a baby would either have to take a week's or fortnight's holiday, give birth, then go straight back to work, or she would have to resign and hope to re-start her career later on. The concept of maternity leave was introduced because we're all hopefully adult enough to realise that there are biological differences between men and women that sometimes mean that while there may be equality before the law, there is in practice inequality in society. But the literalists who think strict legal equality is all that matters would look at this as an example of discrimination: after all, what man can take six or 12 months off work and have the guaranteed right to return?

Once you accept the principle that feminism is about creating social equality rather than equality in legal rights, I think you will look differently at most of what feminism has achieved, and still wants to achieve.

As for the question of whether feminism is a political movement, I refer you to the long-standing feminist slogan, 'the personal is political'. I take this to mean that most feminists have objectives that are personal, improving women's lives, but that they believe that achieving their goals requires interface with politics. Which is why, to refer back to the very start of this thread, a group of Polish feminists thought it a good idea to hold a congress to decide on policies and campaigns...

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ Foreigner4, the reason why I, and I suspect others such as f stop, have not responded to the specific examples raised in criticism of feminism is simply because that's all they are: a few specific examples. Yes, there are some people who claim to be feminists that hate all men, there have been some instances of feminists campaigning for things that many might seem unreasonable, and there are some feminists for whom the ideology is part of a bigger battle against capitalism or society. These instances do not represent the entirety of feminist thought, nor its mainstream. Most feminists just want to imrprove women's lot, not at men's expense, by making sensible changes to society that most people, male or female, would be comfortable with.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


Actually I think the points made by the gym manager were fair, and having some women-only sessions in the gym is reasonable. Women have posted on this thread before about how they are objectified and made to feel inadequate about their bodies. I can see how this might deter many of them from going to gyms. If providing them with times when they can exercise without fearing that some man is either leering at them or secretly laughing, surely that's a good thing.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


Actually, if the mayor of that German town is right about women and parking, bringing in the female racing driver to give women advanced driving skills and also boost their confidence would be a much better way to help them drive better than designing special, extra-large parking bays. It might also inspire girls to think they could do jobs involving cars and driving.

Generations of conditioning have led girls and women to believe they are less capable, inferior, marginalised and generally inferior to men; this has been reinforced by legal and other constraints preventing them from doing certain things. Do you really resent feminism's attempts to change this?

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

If society sends out messages to girls and women that they are useless at something (for instance, driving cars), this creates a risk that they either don't do it, or they set their expectations low so don't do it well. Much better to send out positive messages such as celebrating women who are great racing drivers or car engineers, to inspire a new generation to follow their examples.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]

@ Zimmy, you're missing the point about that Telegraph news story. It's not that the German mayor is biased in favour of women, it's that there's still sexism in society if a man can seriously think it's acceptable to stigmatise women as useless with machinery by providing special, easy-entry parking bays for them.

OK, some women find parking hard - but so do some men. And some other women are brilliant at driving. For instance, coincidentally also in Germany, I was once driven round the Nurburgring by the circuit's resident racing driver - a rather attractive blonde woman called, from memory, Sabine. We went so fast I struggled to keep my lunch down.

Patronising initiatives such as the women's easy parking bays send out a message, especially to young girls: you're useless at this kind of thing, don't even try.

Life / Professional feminists' of Poland meet-up [631]


At last you recognise that not all feminists are man-haters! Eventually we'll get you to realise that most feminists are like the woman sitting next to you at work or laying next to you in bed, who like and love men and just want to deal with any remaining impediments that make it harder for them to achieve their full potential and enjoy the same freedoms as men.