Women judge and police each other openly, yes, but men tend to judge women silently. That means if a man doesn't find a woman attractive he'll just ignore her (or act polite but curt).
Yes, some men will openly judge and mock women's appearances. These men tend to have a lot of other behaviour problems though.
Both men and women will tend to be polite but brief with a person they are not attracted to (in the context that the other person is trying to develop a romantic relationship). That is completely normal and I think it's fine and healthy.
Feminism will struggle against the tendency of women's attraction to be more heavily weighted by appearance than by character or economic status like men are.
I feel like from there men and women have organized themselves and their "competition" according to the criteria set by the opposite sex. Women will become more critical of other women's appearances and men will be more critical of masculine criteria (how much money do you make, can you defend yourself, are you tough/independent/emotionally stable) including penis size, because that is oh so important to making a woman happy.
Maybe men and women impose the harshest standards on themselves because they want to appease the opposite side more. And maybe even though it's true that those are characteristics we value in the opposite sex, we don't objectify the opposite sex as much as they objectify themselves.
Some men and women will resent the way they are "judged", blaming their "judges" for their feelings of inferiority. Some men and women will try to capitalize on the others insecurity to their own gain. Mostly the inferiority is self imposed.
It's a strange balance to acknowledge that (for example) appearances are important, and that it will be more difficult for either sex, particularly women, to find a partner if they don't take care of their appearances. And while that might be true acknowledging that you aren't an object and subjective qualities outside of the rubric of attraction actually do matter and are valuable to people you want to attract.
I don't think attraction will ever be negotiated, and that's where feminism will fail and frustrate people. It might become more taboo to admit you like her cause she's a lingerie model, or that he's a catch because he makes 7 figures, but those things are always going to make a person stand out no matter how angry or inferior it makes us feel.
There are many situations where those things won't make a person stand out, at least not in a positive light.
You describe a landscape that exists, but there are many other landscapes interleaved. We have some degree of control over which landscapes we choose to engage.
Feminism/Anarchism is not about making the "beauty+money" landscape go away, it's about helping people find situations when they can opt out of it.
Feminism and anarchy seem to target an entire culture. It really doesn't focus on the individual more than the collective. I think that necessarily manipulates all of these land scapes.
If it becomes transphobic to not date a trans person, purely on the basis of them being transgender, it necessarily affects everyone who interacts with a trans person who hits on them.
If it becomes sexist to watch and produce porn that can be interpreted as degrading to women, it necessarily changes decisions the porn that all people watch. If it is sexist for women to not be represented 50/50 for specifically high paying tech jobs, it necessarily affects that works with women or own a tech company. It almost certainly will make those changes through coercion rather than eliminating sexism in the interview process. People will pretend like all of these changes are justified but deep down it doesn't change the way we think and it only builds resentments against movements which restrict and criticise behaviors which are fair.
Some of the issues that these movements take on simply do not have a place for choice. It affects the entire landscape.
Helping women deal with "unrealistic beauty standards" would not work by ensuring that men don't prioritize or advertise with women that are beautiful (if you raise a bit and glorify images of women who are traditionally considered ugly, it will not work). If a boy is castrated at birth through a medical accident, and is raised as a girl and even given hormones, it still doesn't change traditionally male behaviors and sexual preference. People are not blank slates and I think we need to be careful that we set up a society that fundamentally works against ones nature.
Not that we should give in to every impulse, but I hope you can see what I'm getting at. At a work interview, women should be measured only in merit. Under the law, men and women should not be treated differently, except in manners that can only affect women or men (abortion, circumcision, etc.) In a social system, changing the way that people think about their attraction to women is just twisted.
I think it would be better to work on an individual level to help a person change the way they think about themselves to resolve the self esteem issues that photoshopped advertisements, or cookie cutter models and newscasters produce.
> It almost certainly will make those changes through coercion rather than eliminating sexism in the interview process
Why do you say that? You're basically presuming bad faith. Eliminating sexism in the interview process is exactly what anti-bias recruiting tries to do.
> it only builds resentments against movements which restrict and criticise behaviors which are fair
Not only that. It also helps get better people into the positions where they can be more effective, which leads to a more productive economy overall. The resentment is an unfortunate (I think inevitable) side effect.
To me the wage gaps are evidence that we're not using the labor force effectively, that there are talented women and people of color who are not getting into jobs where their skills are adequately leveraged. So getting them into better positions means companies will be more successful. The statistics suggest that some of the men in these positions don't deserve to be there and are holding their organizations back.
I understand you interpret the data in a different way, that some things just make men and white people more valuable. Differences aside, can you see that these interpretations are subjective and the data doesn't actually differentiate between "the women are just less capable" and "the process is not promoting the best people"? Those two realities are indistinguishable from pay data alone, which is why the stats become a Rorschach test for peoples' beliefs about gender differences.
Not sure how to engage the rest of your argument... I definitely wouldn't say people are blank slates, nor would I deny that gender differences exist. The vast majority of feminists don't think those things, those positions are straw men that anti-feminists like to bring up because they are easy to argue against.
> Not sure how to engage the rest of your argument... I definitely wouldn't say people are blank slates, nor would I deny that gender differences exist. The vast majority of feminists don't think those things, those positions are straw men that anti-feminists like to bring up because they are easy to argue against.
I myself see this as child abuse. It's a life altering decision made by a child who is too young to understand the consequences. If you don't see this as harmful, you can ignore the rest of this comment, because then I don't have an argument. But if you do see this as a problem, why don't you and others on the left speak out against it?
This is what scares me about you guys. Some of you preach moderation, but you all seem fine with things be taken as far as they can go.
> wage gaps are evidence that we're not using the labor force effectively
That is only true if we view wages as the only factor in job selection and priority. If we accept that men are greater impacted by wealth through attraction and social status then we also should accept that those should create a bias in how prioritized wealth is.
And as could be guessed, that is exactly what studies show. When given multiple choices, men tend to choose higher wages over other work benefits. An employer that tries to maximize the effectiveness of the labor force might do so by providing the maximal amount of benefit to their employees. Worse, if they try to predict the needs of the their employees the wage gap would be created even if individual employees don't share the overall priority of their group.
We could fix the wage gap statistics by trying to convert all aspects of work that an employee values into a common unit. Job satisfaction could be such metric but normally wages are not considered a part of it so in a mirror reflection of the wage gap, there is a identical gap in job satisfaction that favors women.
Instead of looking at this as a gendered issue, simply apply some general concept for human behavior. Members within a social ranked group is less limited or more willing to openly police and criticize aspects that defines social status, while non-members adhere and reinforces the social status through silent judgment and selectiveness.
If we apply this generally we would predict to see men openly judge and police each other on the basis of wealth and professional titles (which mostly operate as a proxy for wealth). Similar a woman who doesn't find that a man is worthy will just ignore him or be curt.
I wonder if we don't see the exact same pattern to other social ranked groups such as for example religious communities and political parties.
Yes, some men will openly judge and mock women's appearances. These men tend to have a lot of other behaviour problems though.