Comment on True love
Damionsipher@lemmy.world 4 hours agoDoes your faux feminist view actually help protect women, or does it help protect the men who prey upon them?>
That’s where you said that women need protection from “men who prey upon them”. Every statement you make suggests that women need protection from power imbalances and that society needs to focus its efforts on protecting them in their innocence.
Chloe Mendel is an NYC fashion industry heris. She was established as a corporate executive by the time she was 30 and has otherwise enjoyed a life guided by wealth and nepotism. In contrast, Billy Corgan was raised in a lower middle-class household in the Chicago suburbs, with his youth marked by an abusive father. Corgan is a notable piece of shit, but this was long known prior to the start of his and Mendel’s relationship.
Your fluctuating in and out of calling old white men evil and young women innocent and incapable of power seems directed at creating a worldview that erases women’s history and identity while elevating the power of old white men. If you actually cared about power balance within a relationships, I would have hoped you could provide a single piece of data on why Mendel was deprived of power, beyond “she’s too young!”. A woman who holds that much wealth and family power at a young age doesn’t exactly scream “incapable innocent”, though, does it? I see no reason to believe that there is anything nefarious to this relationship, or that Mendel was powerless from its outset. Sure, Corgan sucks as a human, but I see no evidence of his relationship to Mendel as being “wrong”.
I don’t disagree that women are systematically disadvantaged, but placing that disadvantage on age only obfuscates how women are disadvantaged in favour of a narrative that women’s choices are not valid in the face of the broader context of being disadvantage. All this framing does is further solidify the societal notions that women are enfeeble and in need of protection as they are otherwise incapable of defending themselves. It operates on a level that places women’s autonomy as a lower priority than discrediting old white men.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 3 hours ago
Why do you think disenfranchised people want equality? Do you think it’s just to feel proud? Not being equal means you are vulnerable to abuse from those with more access to power.
Are you denying that there are women who have been preyed upon by men? Are you denying that women have been disenfranchised from economic and social independence?
All disadvantaged groups want the same protections offered by a truly equal society. I don’t know why you keep trying to interpret that in the most neck beard way possible.
" In 2011, the company closed its Chicago flagship store.[25] In 2013, Gores was looking for an additional partner in the company.[26] In 2015, a majority stake was sold to Stallion, Inc.[27][28] In 2018, J. Mendel was under six different lawsuits for unpaid bills, relating to unpaid office space, advertising and materials.[29][30] In June, the company filed for Chapter 11 protection in bankruptcy court"
I don’t think they were really going to inherit a lot of wealth. She’s the daughter of a luxury clothes designer who lost their business. She was a CEO after ten years of being in a relationship with a millionaire.
Again, we are talking about the people at the time which applies to there own relationship. Which would still make him vastly more powerful than her. Also what the hell do you think a 19 year old knows about a person in a band that was popular before they were born?
Do you only speak through strawman arguments? I never said any of that.
Kinda sounds like that’s what her husband thinks “her youth was an advantage because she hadn’t been wounded like so many people are, because you just go through life and you get wounded. So I had the advantage of somebody who was really open to love and the possibility and, for whatever reason, just decided not to judge me for who I was, particularly in that moment.”
Pretty sure I talked about legal, social, and economic power… You are the one who seems to be focusing on age alone.
Lol, again with the faux feminist concern. Your totally being woke for being brave enough to allow the teenager to be sexually exploited to the rich.
You do know you could use all your arguments to justify the sex trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein right? Jeffrey was totally woke because he allowed women to make choices, like getting on the plane to the rape island.
Again, you are pretending as if a 19 year old has the same ability to resist coercion and manipulation as a 50 year old with power over them.
Damionsipher@lemmy.world 2 hours ago
Your obviously not interested in a discussion, you’re her for a debate and to be “right”. You’re deciding to look at the issue as “any age gap is indicative of power imbalance” and gloss over any notion of what being an adult in the world means. I have asked multiple times, in multiple threads that if 19 does not constitute being an adult, what does? That you conflate that with a justification of child sex trafficking is an insane position. I haven’t made a single value claim about what it means to be a consenting adult, but I will here for clarity: if someone is allowed to vote, has graduated primary education (high school), can serve in the military, or can be sued/imprisoned for their actions as a coherent individual of sound mind, they are an adult. I think society’s shorthand of 18 is reasonable, albeit sometimes problematic, towards these effects, and that if someone can work as a wage labourer, vote, or be killed in military combat, they should be able to decide on a romantic partner for themselves. I think conversion and consent laws should be strengthened, towards respecting women’s decisions regarding their own bodies, from what sexual and/or romantic partners they choose, to if they choose to engage in sex work, or beyond. I think sex work is real work and should be enshrined as such towards providing workers rights (including pensioner, vacation, employment insurance, and sick leave rights). On a personal note, I’m married to a woman who is 8onths younger than I am, and who is a published sex worker advocate and with whom I bonded over feminist theory. We both reject Puritan notions of feminism that do nothing to address underlying societal/cultural narratives that disenfranchise women from attaining personal autonomy. Keep slinging the personal insults all you like, but know that by doing so you only serve to embolden culture war distractions that would rather fixation on “sexual deviance” than systemic issues that perpetuate oppression throughout society.
TranscendentalEmpire@lemmy.today 2 hours ago
What is a discussion where two people have opposing narratives that conflict…? What would we call that?
Any significant age gap is a type of power imbalance that can occur in a relationship.
You haven’t asked me… Who said it’s ethical for an adult to take advantage of another adult?
Why according to your argument is that you support any woman to make decisions for themselves, even if the outcome is really bad. What are you saying every rich man who flies you in a plane is Jeffrey Epstein?
Sounds like you lacked dialectic materialism in your feminists analysis. Your interpretation of feminism just so happens to match the needs of the aristocratic class. Convenient.
Damionsipher@lemmy.world 1 hour ago
Because you don’t seem to have a good grasp on the subtleties of language, or how debate differs from discussion: www.uopeople.edu/blog/debate-and-discussion/
I’ll straight up ask you: If 19 doesn’t count as an adult, capable of making decisions for themselves, what does? In the instance of Corgan and Mendel’s relationship, what evidence if there of taking advantage? If Corgan befriended a 19 year old male musician with no pre-tense of sexual gratification, would we assume that was an inappropriate relationship predicated on taking advantage of another adult? In your worldview, should men over the age of 25 simply not be allowed to speak with people under the age of 25? What policy amendments would make a more fair world that reduced the sexualization of girls?
If your feminist values are actually based on dialectic materialism, you must be willing to acknowledge that the vast majority of your presumed critique of age-gap power imbalances are inherently due to wealth/affluence imbalances that are primarily contingent on contemporary capitalist sensibilities of the world. If it is actual power imbalances that your critique is focused upon, you must be even more critical of worker/company power imbalances that drive society as a whole and acknowledge that Walmart has done more harm to society than every music star who has ever lived combined. That corporate practices of rejecting parental leaves has an oversized impact on women who are more susceptible to financial harm than men, due to male-wage-privilege perpetrated by said corporations. You must also be aware and acknowledge that the intersectionality of wealth/race/class/gender/sexuality all conspire towards ones privileges in the world, but that outsized privilege in one of those areas of personhood can all but erase privilege-impacts from other areas of personhood. You must also be adamantly opposed to people of wealth pursuing relationships with people who do not have wealth?
To be clear here, I am very critical of power imbalances and how hegemonic orderings of society reinforce such imbalances. This is why I am so critical of puritian aesthetics, as they operate on narratives of women being lesser than and in need of protection from nefarious men by virtuous men. I reject those notions and choose to focus on empowering women to speak up and have space and support to do so when and where abuse occurs.
If we follow your statements to a teleological ends, your argument is that no person should be allowed to enter into an activity/relationship that could cause them harm. Do you think that people should not be allowed to work dangerous jobs? Should they not be allowed to take out a business loan? Should they be allowed to get pregnant at all? Any of these actions/situations could result in a “really bad outcome”. Do you believe that women need extra protection from “really bad outcomes”, that they lack the mental ability to make decisions for themselves?
If a male partner manipulates/coerses/abuses an female partner of the same age, should it be given less scrutiny because that pre-cursor of age-gap was not present? Should children of single mothers not be allowed to live with new partners of the mother, as that is the highest family make-up for child abuse to occur? And, by extension, should single mothers be criticized for dating, knowing that those are the statistics?
I still don’t know why you’re bringing Epstein into this discussion. As far as I can tell you are looking at every relationship with a power differential as equivalent to Epstein - which is very weird and again, I don’t see how it relates to discussions of adult relationships, unless you don’t consider 19 year olds to be adults. It’s also interesting that you focus on Epstein, when Maxwell was seemingly the person who was responsible for establishing relationships with young women towards their eventual rape and abuse. The common thread between Maxwell and Epstein being wealth and lust for power, not gender identity or age. I guess invoking notions of a female predator would undermine your thesis of old-man=evil?