ShaktiSama
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Joined: 8/13/2007
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ORIGINAL: Aswad
That such a man is a coward, etc., we can agree on.
Nice to agree once in a while!
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Put it this way: if you approach a wolf with a smile on your face, your intention may be friendly, but in wolf-speak, it is interpreted as a prelude to baring fangs. ...
Perhaps a similar realization can be useful in dealing with communication and harmonious coexistence between two genders whose cultures have only truly started merging in recent years...
I cannot speak for other societies besides my own, but honestly I think you are giving too much credit to a large number of people. There is a very large contingent of folks who genuinely feel that the Natural Order is Threatened when they have to work under a female boss, take orders from a female officer, or treat women as equals socially. They are not the SAME people who are threatened by having an African-American man as their president, but if you look at the wave of death threats and hate-crimes that have followed the recent election in the United States, you'll see that these are not simple misunderstandings or miscommunication. There is a genuine, very real, very ugly backlash when groups who have been traditionally privileged are suddenly forced to share power with the groups who have traditionally been deprived of rights or power.
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Either my qualities are sufficient to elicit a submissive response from another human, or they are not, regardless of our respective genders.
I find nothing much to disagree with here, if you have disavowed the male supremacist philosophy. I am not a gender supremacist myself, although I have been known to defend the right of dominant women and submissive men to enjoy "female supremacy" as a fantasy without being accused of being criminal or insane. This is more motivated by a desire to give equal time and equal validity to dominant female sexuality and submissive male sexuality than anything else. Again, in my own society, male-D and femme-S are very privileged and "naturalized" to the point of absurdity.
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You're not the only one. I've probably had to beat such idiots with a virtual stick more often than you have.
Possibly so. I tend to avoid conflict with them as much as possible, because I feel it's foolish to argue with people about their fantasies and their mutually consenting lifestyle. I just dislike it when they try to promote their male supremacist fantasies as fact.
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Every time an employer hires "a nice pair of legs," instead of a qualified, female professional, women lose out, and so do men.
Again, I don't disagree with this. There is a reason that I resist having my appearance judged or commented upon in inappropriate situations, and why I do not dress to be sexually provocative in academic or professional situations. Peddling sex rather than competence is a nasty habit derived from The Bad Old Days, when sex was the only route to power, influence or economic security that was available to most women.
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Perhaps you can offer some advice at more accurately representing such intentions?
The same communication style that works in other forms of conflict resolution would probably work when discussing women's problems with women. You have to acknowledge both the objective and subjective truth of the experience that some people are having. Women seldom report experiences in this vein which are not at least subjectively real. And there are simple statistical realities that are beyond dispute re: equal pay, equal access to promotions and the highest levels of authority and income, etc., that you have to deal with. Women are fifty percent of the human race: there is nowhere on earth where they have fifty percent of the political and economic resources in a society. This is to say nothing of the way that men and women are differentially targeted for gendered violence.
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From what I gather in my conversations with women in the US and here, their situations are different, and the attitudes of men in the two places differ.
As such, it may be helpful to indicate whether a problem is considered general to men, or to US culture.
US culture has its defects like any others, but this country is hardly the worst in the world to be a woman. I will gladly take the battle for authority and equality in the workplace here in the USA over the struggle for life that women face virtually anywhere in the Islamic world, in China or on the continent of Africa. I am not completely devoid of perspective.
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What I said was essentially that, regardless of gender, assuming that formal authority equates to perceived authority is a gotcha, because it happens to contradict a long standing subsurface tradition which may or may not be biological in nature. I also said that men appear to be more aware of this trap. Thus, for a man and a woman who both have the same formal and innate authority, the man currently has a greater chance of realizing that "I cannot extend my authority this far, even if I formally have it, because it will not be credible, which will provoke a negative response."
I can't speak to this; this thread was begun by an OP who was reporting a basic disjunct in the ability to see ANY female authority as valid by certain men. My only real comment on this score is that some dominant/vanilla men are not the only ones guilty of this; there are plenty of women who behave the same way and they can be even more destructive and undermining than the men.
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P.S.: For whatever it's worth, this exchange has appeared more productive to my eyes than past ones. That's a compliment, too.
Happy that you're happy. 
< Message edited by ShaktiSama -- 11/15/2008 6:48:03 PM >
_____________________________
"Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea."
-- Robert A. Heinlein
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RE: Men who dont like Dominant women - 
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