Debates discussion

What are peoples opinions on modern day feminist. Just to start us off I’ll name some controversial topics:

Trans exclusionary radical feminism (terf) the idea that the trans movement is erasing the idea of women and all the rights they have fought for

Women’s rights vs mens right. Have modern day women gone too far and have they started taking rights from men?

Women in the work place. Should there be mandatory representation in the workplace even in jobs which women don’t often fill?

Body positivity, should it be encouraged for women to have sex which who they want and not have consequences. And should people who are over weight not have to hear what others think of them?

on body positivity: I think that sometimes body positivity can meet with toxic positivity in ways that aren’t healthy. Body positivity as a movement has made so much headway against the prevailing beauty standard of skinny, and helped people accept their bodies. Some women are just naturally curvy, or naturally have more fat, so when all they see are stick-thin supermodels it really destroys their self esteem. I think body positivity is helped make changes in the modeling industry too, so that women see representation of all body types. However I do think that when people are all positive without acknowledging the negative, that sets things up to become unhealthy. If a unhealthily overweight person is met with constant body positivity (which as of yet is not necessarily a cultural norm but may become one) they might not take the steps they need to to become the most healthy version of themselves. However, this isn’t really as much of a problem as far as I’ve seen. No one I know is in denial of their body shape or fat, people know when they need to work on themselves. If body positivity helps them feel more secure and confident in their skin, brings about positive and inclusive change, and promotes love for all bodies and body types, then I think it’s a movement definitely worth celebrating.

I do think the modern movement has gone too far. At this point there’s nothing to fight for. Where do women not have equal, or more, rights then men?

For women in the workplace I don’t think there should be mandatory representation. Whoever is best for the job should get it.

For the body positivity, I pretty much agree with Anika. It’s good to a degree, but when we get to the point of celebrating being overweight and unhealthy it needs to hit the brakes.

I personally don’t think it has gone far enough. And no rights have been taking from men and most definitely do not have more rights than men.

I agree that the best person for the job should gay the job but it should be monitored to make sure there is less bias and women who are qualified do get the job with equal pay especially for women of different races and ethnicitys.

And the body positivity movement is awesome. I don’t think it is trying to promote unhealthyness but trying to bring understanding to the fact that all bodies are beautiful m.

Yes Abby, totally agree! I think some people try to characterize body positivity as unhealthy, but I don’t think it’s at that level yet or will be for a long time.

@ concinnous The gender pay gap is one of the issues that the movement covers. In the us the average white woman makes 78cents to a white mans dollar and it is worse for black, Hispanic, and Asian women.

Abby wrote: "@ concinnous The gender pay gap is one of the issues that the movement covers. In the us the average white woman makes 78cents to a white mans dollar and it is worse for black, Hispanic, and Asian ..."

Well there is more to it than that. It has less to do with discrimination and more to do with preferences. The study you are siting is famously flawed as it looks at every man and every woman without taking into account lifestyle.

This means that gap mostly comes from women choosing to be stay at home mothers, choosing lower paying jobs as they only have to work so many hours. Then on top of that there is also differences in professions. A school teacher dominated by women make less than a oil worker which is dominated by men. A nurse makes less than an engineer ect.

A parallel Study actually found the opposite is the problem. That when women take positions that are traditionally dominated by men they often get over payed for the amount of work they put in. Meaning a man and woman making the same salary, say being engineers. The man has no problem taking overtime and rarely takes vacations. While the woman almost never takes overtime and always uses her vacation. But because they are paid the same, the man does more work.

Abby wrote: "I personally don’t think it has gone far enough. And no rights have been taking from men and most definitely do not have more rights than men.

I agree that the best person for the job should gay t..."

Since we all seem to agree that only those qualified should get jobs, let me throw a wrench into that agreement. Just for the fun of debating.

There was a study done that determined that if we only hired candidates based on credentials and aptitude for male dominated position. That Female applicants almost never get hired. This is because in an environment with an excessive supply of male applicants. The best male applicants will be compared to an average female applicant. Or in other terms if 100 people are applying for a position and only 5 are women, the likely hood that the men are just better qualified increases dramatically.

The study proposed the only solution to this inequality of competence is to hire based off gender first and only afterwards hire off of aptitude. What do people think of this?

Yes they pay women less because they assume they will have children and or become stay at home moms. Which is wrong because they don’t assume that men will become stay at home fathers and pay them less for that.

And it does have to do with discrimination because black, Asian, Hispanic, and indigenous women have it worse.

There have also been many studies where they put in the same application twice but with one difference the name and the male names application was offered more money and accepted more and or first.

And for your last statement did you know that when lots of women want to go into a profession that is male dominated increasingly less men join because it becomes seen as a woman’s profession.

But I do still think that people should be hired based if aptitude but applications should be name less and with out the gender specified to make sure that there is no bias.

Yes to the mandatory representation as long as obviously there are women who want to participate and are not there just to fill a checklist for "women representation" but genuinely enjoys the job and is the best person for it. There are a lot of jobs where women are underrepresented (such as computer science/coding) and overall I don't see why not.

Personally I have a lot of conflicted feelings with the body positivity movement but for the most part strongly disagree with it. The concept of loving your body despite it's weight is admirable and is definitely a good thing to promote but the idea went quite downhill. I'll say this quite bluntly: obesity isn't healthy. This should be obvious but in our current day and age if you point this out it almost seems to be seen as a form of oppression if you claim otherwise and are yelled at for "fat shaming". Just check out the Tiktok accounts featuring body positivity (on second thought: don't). The movement encourages people to remain at their current unhealthy weight to "love themselves" yet there's a lot flaws in this idea when it's obese people using this movement to remain at their current weight. It's a good thing to love your body obviously at all sizes but there's always a limit to that and to discourage this belief that being fat is a good thing when it clearly isn't. It's unhealthy and dangerous, it isn't fat shaming just reality. It should've been a movement that encourages a much more safer and realistic outlook to life. Being happy about yourself about yourself regardless of looks and weight and having better mental health than being ashamed is a much more better concept than encouraging obesity. I prefer body neutrality which describes what I mentioned.

I don't think women rights hasn't gone too far. Women these days have a lot of equal rights to men but it could be better.

So the study I was talking about from my last comment had HR looking at applications that did not have name gender or ethnicity. Only their work experience and test results from an aptitude test. And as you can see, I shared the results of that study. It suggests that if we look purely at who is the most qualified. Women often get left out.

Just because your over weight doesn’t mean your unhealthy you don’t have to be skinny to be healthy. The movement is saying every body is beautiful and natural not go be over weight. Fat shaming is a big problem it is in no way ok to discriminate against anyone based on their size and calling people unhealthy because they are fat is gross.

Abby wrote: "Just because your over weight doesn’t mean your unhealthy you don’t have to be skinny to be healthy. The movement is saying every body is beautiful and natural not go be over weight. Fat shaming is..."

I see what you're saying definitely. There's no way fat shaming is okay, discriminating someone by their weight is disgusting, but pointing out that being obese is unhealthy is not fat shaming or discriminatory but rather a clinical proven fact. Also " you don't have to be skinny to be healthy " is an obvious fact being average or slightly overweight is also just fine.

The movement is saying every body is beautiful and natural not go be over weight.

The admirable side of the body positivity movement is encouraging everyone to be comfortable in their own skin and all weights but it becomes a problem when people use it as an excuse to remain obese because it's a "good" thing to be comfortable in your skin. Being obese isn't something you should hate yourself for, of course not, which I think is what the body positivity movement originally meant to do, discouraging discrimination based on weight and bad mental health, but again it's also something you should not be proud of and is actually dangerous and not a healthy way to live.