[camgunz]

The patriarchy is white, male, and oppresses members of other groups (black men, white women, etc.) Can women sexually harass other women? Absolutely. Is there a huge societal problem where women value other women based solely on their appearance and ability to please men, reducing their opportunities for education, employment, earning, and general success? No. White men hold the cards in US society, and it's the case wherever you look: JDs and MBAs granted, PhDs granted, wages earned, wealth accumulated, income from small and large businesses, statehouses, Congress, the presidency, the board room, Hollywood, etc. etc. etc. You really just can't equate one woman sexually harassing another with an entire institution putting bricks on the heads of half its population from birth.

[Dylan16807]

>The patriarchy is white, male, and oppresses members of other groups (black men, white women, etc.)

And yet you grouped all races together for some reason.

Edit: To elaborate: The current power structure is bad, but it's not a simple male vs. female thing.

[camgunz]

> And yet you grouped all races together for some reason.

Oh you mean when I said "male behavior" instead of "white male behavior".

Social issues in the US are complicated. Can black men benefit from the patriarchy, do they have some privilege because they're male, even though they're black? Yes. Do white women have some privilege solely because they are white? Yes. Are black men or white women part of the patriarchy? No. The patriarchy is a white, male institution that oppresses anyone that isn't.

White women can be racist against minorities, but they can't be sexist against men. Black men can be sexist towards women, but they can't be racist against minorities. This is because racism and sexism are cultural and institutional. They can be rude, they can be discriminatory, but they can't bring cultural and institutional pressures to bear on members of the oppressing group. That power is reserved solely for members of the oppressing group.

> woman behavior...

Sexual harassment is almost entirely male behavior, white, black, etc. It's up to men to stop it. Women have no obligation here. The incidence of women sexually harassing each other is so low, it has practically no social consequences. Therefore, it's not a societal problem we have to fix, and this suggestion is a strawman.

[Dylan16807]

Harasser implies male. Male does not imply harasser.

If you want to talk about the people that decide to harass, use "harassers". Harassers have an obligation to stop.

If you want to talk about how society influences people, use "society". Everyone influences what is seen as acceptable.

Men do not have special control over other men. Saying the fix is "up to men" is inaccurate no matter what you mean. It's either insulting by implying that all men are harassers, or it's insulting by implying that women have no power in shaping society.

So if you want to talk about how men have somewhat more obligation in shaping behavior because of power structures, that sounds like a very interesting conversation. If you want to tell me women have no power/responsibility at all, that's just obnoxious.

[camgunz]

> Harasser implies male. Male does not imply harasser.

Sexual harassment is a problem in the male community. It is perpetrated almost entirely by males. Women have no responsibility to solve male problems. Our behavior is in no way their fault.

> Everyone influences what is seen as acceptable.

No, in our society the patriarchy has decided what is acceptable. In the 18th and 19th centuries, we had laws governing women's dress so they physically couldn't do male labor. We also prohibited them from standing up in stage coaches. There's a long list. You can say, "that's the past", but it's our societal history, like it or not. FWIW, it persists to this day, with different dress codes for male and female high school students, and with men allowed to be shirtless and not women.

> Men do not have special control over other men. Saying the fix is "up to men" is inaccurate no matter what you mean.

I'm not saying men have special control over other men. I'm saying women have no obligation to solve a behavior problem in the male community, especially when they're the victims of that behavior. And if we eliminate women, we're left with... men.

> It's either insulting by implying that all men are harassers

This is a non sequitur, and a strawman. Just because I don't personally harass women doesn't mean I don't have an obligation to stand up to my peers when they do. People are often the best advocates inside their own communities, so for my white male peers, my voice, for better or worse, carries more weight than that of people of color or women. Look up Tim Wise some time.

> or it's insulting by implying that women have no power in shaping society.

Women do have power, but if it were sufficient, there wouldn't be a wage gap. There would be 220 congresswomen instead of 84, and 51 women senators instead of 20. There wouldn't be a war on their reproductive rights. Women fought for 150 years for the right to vote. American male slaves got the right to vote before women did. Marital rape wasn't considered a crime until the 1980s. Women were passed over as estate executors in favor of distant male relatives for decades.

> If you want to tell me women have no power/responsibility at all, that's just obnoxious.

Women fight harassment, sexism, misogyny, and disadvantage every day, even if they're not aware of it. Women pay more for health care. They pay higher mortgage rates and they pay more for cars. They get paid less at work. They're less likely to be hired and less likely to be promoted. When they take initiative in the workplace, they're likely to be penalized, as women are still evaluated on the basis of "likeability". They're basically the sole victims of sexual harassment, and outside the prison system (where the perpetrators of rape are still overwhelmingly male), they're far, far more likely to be the victims of rape. I'm struggling to come up with an area where women have it better than men, and I really can't come up with one.

And after taking stock of all the shit women deal with every day, I think it's wildly, shamefully entitled to argue that on top of all of it, they still have more obligations. To their credit, many women do work hard against sexism, even when it's not their job. But that's their choice, and you don't get to decide for them.

[Dylan16807]

I don't think we're going to reach an agreement on this.

Women have it harder, it sucks. But I don't think all that shit they deal with affects their basic moral obligations. I think moral obligations are tied into the level of power people have, and women have nonzero power so they have nonzero obligations.

Talking about a "male community" to argue they have the obligation and nobody else is a false grouping. You could just as easily lump "abusive men" and "women that know spanish" and start saying the responsibility lies on mexico to stop the abusers.

There is no male-only cabal with 3 billion members. There is a fucked-up patriarchy where men have more power but not all of the power.

[camgunz]

When you say that women have some level of moral obligation, you're assigning them responsibility for the current state of affairs. They've had nothing to do with setting up the current social/cultural/institutional system that oppresses them. Not a single thing. They do, however, make tough decisions to try and survive and thrive in it. Our society in the US is not a woman's society. It's a white male society and it's up to white males to fix it, by listening to women and minorities and doing our best to acknowledge and respond to their experiences.

If you like terrible analogies, here's another. What you're arguing is that an inmate falsely imprisoned is obligated to keep others from being falsely imprisoned if they have significant resources and there is little to no risk to them. Stipulating for now that there's a way to objectively quantify risk and that there are situations that are definitely low or no risk (which is a tenuous claim), the former prisoner owes society nothing. They were oppressed. They're trying to get her their life together, and even if they can deem a given situation low/no risk, and even if they somehow clawed their way out from under a felony into success, they're under no obligation to use their hard-won resources to fix society's fucked up "justice" system. They'd go broke in 10 minutes, for one thing.

You've argued that amount of harassment isn't an issue, but it absolutely is. If every woman in a position of power were obligated to spend their resources fighting harassment, that's all they'd do (or, according to you, they'd be part of the problem). This is an unfair responsibility you're assigning to women, who are in no way responsible for the current mess.

> women have nonzero power so they have nonzero obligations

They also have nonzero risk and aren't responsible for society's oppression of them. They also have less power as a result of the patriarchy; you can't tell someone who just got robbed that they'll have to pay some money to catch the thief. They just got robbed! You can't tell women to spend their resources to fight the patriarchy, the patriarchy saps their resources every chance it gets.