
Oppressed Majority: the film about a world run by women that went viral - Vervious
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2014/feb/11/oppressed-majority-film-women-eleonore-pourriat
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ivanca
You mean; like a world where men would be send to war and just very few women?
or a world where most homeless people are straight males? Or a world where
women get custody of the child on the majority of the divorces? Oh wait, that
is this world; I guess you will have to pick your bias of what oppression
actually means.

~~~
calibraxis
Who kills soldiers in war? Dudes. Who orders them into war? Dudes. Who's in
charge of gov't and corporations which decide on war? Dudes.

In fact, women often have to fight for the right to be soldiers.
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_military#In_the_Un...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_military#In_the_United_States))

Who's in control of societies with norms where women are supposed to be at
home taking care of kids while men are programmers or something? Dudes. Unless
you have a shadow conspiracy where presidents and capitalists are backed by
women.

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meric
You write as if there's a shadow conspiracy to keep females from playing
masculine roles. Have you ever thought that the reason most soldiers are men,
that generals are men, and governments and corporations are headed by mostly
men, that the parent that stays home to take care of the kid is usually a
woman, is because men are more inclined to play masculine roles, and women are
more inclined to play feminine roles, out of their own natural preferences,
due to the way their bodies are built, and the way hormones in said bodies are
emitted? It's undeniable that there are physical differences between men and
women, and it would be a gross denial of reality to suggest physical
differences' effects on society could be rendered meaningless simply because
people agree they can be.

Confucius once said “Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, the
father a father, the son a son.” "Truly if the ruler be not a ruler, the
subject not a subject, the father not a father, the son not a son, then even
if there be grain, would I get to eat it?” (Analects 12:11)

And I'll add to it "Let men be men, and women be women. If the men are not men
and women are not women, then all you'd have are a bunch of androgynous
adults.".

It's possible for men and women to have equal status, but it is lunacy to
suggest that men and women are equal, because they absolutely are not and
cannot be. It makes as much sense to suggest dogs can be equal to cats, that
apples can be equal to oranges.

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tlogan
It is important to mention the context of situation in France. France ranks
57th in the world for women's equality, behind much of Eastern Europe, as well
as Mongolia [1]. They are really a little behind...

[1]
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/10/25...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/10/25/why-
french-women-have-so-little-equality-a-story-in-charts/)

~~~
lionhearted
I found the article saying "behind Mongolia" to be a bit misleading, because
it's apples and oranges.

I've spent a fair amount of time in Ulaanbaatar and know Mongolian history
reasonably well -- it's unique in that it's got a strong warrior/frontier
ethos to it, and has since... like, forever. There's very strong traditional
gender roles in Mongolia within households, though the women fall into a sort
of loose warrior-matriarch ideal like the way we see Sparta depicted in
movies. But it's not "women's equality" the way, say, Scandinavia is.

It might be accurate, in a sense, but without context it's misleading.
Mongolian society is really unique in that it shares its origins from steppe
nomadic culture, traditional Northeast Asian (Confucianism, etc), Buddhism,
and yet recently and still today leans slightly more towards the Russian
sphere than the Chinese one, and has some elements of Eastern European
culture.

The women there are entrepreneurial, but also typically interested in marrying
young and having 5+ children. They watch movies and television which show
female Mongolian warriors like Chinggis Khan's first wife, Borte. But they
also like Korean soap operas.

It's a tricky to place to get one's mind around, quite unique, but potentially
misleading in a Western-centric piece without context.

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smtddr
Now watch all the HN men start to defend themselves, completely missing the
message.

____

Preemptive: I know what's coming next. Don't even bother asking me what the
message is. Doesn't matter what I say, it'll spiral into a mess of
disagreements and pointless debate. Here's a hint though...
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7204058](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7204058)
. Open your hearts and tone down the logic-machine for just a moment. Allow
yourself to _feel_.

~~~
JanezStupar
I feel, insulted. There is that good enough for you?

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slamdesu
Wow these comments are completely missing the point. Any mention of feminism
or claims that women are oppressed are met with "but guys have it worse!!!!".
Check out everydaysexism.com if you want an idea of what women ACTUALLY go
through. It's very easy to think you know what everyone experiences, but if
you're male you _cannot_ know what it is like to be female, simply because
people will treat you differently based on your sex... as illustrated by this
film.

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dclowd9901
What's the point with this film? That just because the genders have been
reversed, my sympathies would actually fall differently? Is this really still
an issue? This seems like a student project from the late 80s. If there is an
opposite to "poignant" or "relevant", this is it.

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hrktb
Living in France now...they would have made the same movie with a small (let's
say 1m50) openly gay and dressing sexy guy, eventually brown skin, and they
could have kept almost exactly the same script, there would be no need to
inverse genders, and it would be a kind of pseudo documentary instead of some
half baked commentary on a complex subject.

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Niten
It might be tangential, but that's an odd choice of title for the film given
that females are actually the majority in France (as well as in, say, the
United States).

