Feminism: C or D?

For some reason I get the feeling Dave is actually interested in discussing this question. The fact he introduced the topic in his own special way can't be a surprise to many people...

(/me ducks and runs)

Ie. women's *right to work* being an illusion since women have historically usually HAD to work, and the *right* was only ever for those with the luxury of choice, to escape the social conditioning which expected them to remain at home? ie escape for posh, bored wives? Is this a distraction from the right of EVERYONE regardless of gender to have employment?

Ony askin'...

I'd be lying if I said I didn't sometimes wonder about some of this myself, even as a self-identified feminist. I was talking to someone last week about the problems of teaching feminism to students who mostly combine a convication about absolute sexual difference with an insouciant faith in rhetorics of equal opportunities. And I came out thinking why do we bother? Do we want to make them like us, ie still caught up in daily struggles with body image and the power of romance narratives, still shaving our legs and anticipating career/motherhood trade-offs - but now with added FEMINIST GUILT? (comes free with your arts/humanities degree!!).

But I don't really think that's good enough, and it maybe suggests some responses to dave q's question. That is, I think insofar as feminism has 'succeeded' in some parts of the world it's done so by creaming off the somewhat palatable liberal individualist parts which have, by luck or judgement, coincided with broader shifts in global politics/economics, and the logic of the labour market in particular, without attending to the rest of the agenda. So, divorce/abortion: feminism = women's right to control their fertility/sexuality/romantic lives, but the 'naturalness' of the nuclear family and its attendant gendeer roles remain largely unchallenged?

Final point (because I'm burbling and flailing really badly here): holding 'feminism' responsible for this:

" [a]cultural shift from Enlightenment rationalism to intuitive' new-age murkiness (with corresponding emphasis on the 'personal' sphere leading to the solipsism which led to the sort of foreign policy America is famous for)"

is pretty nonsensical, I think. Feminism, like most identity-politics, has a much more ambiguously interesting relationship with the enlightenment and modernity, insofar as it simultaneously depends on a discourse of rights *and* seeks to challenge the unprecedented power and historical truth of its presumption to speak a universal truth. And secondly, the withdrawal into personal politics has its roots in a much wider set of cultural forces, not least the implosion of (male-dominated) countercultural politics in the early seventies.

I can't believe I'm about to submit this mess, but...

i guess the point i'll ultimately end up making is that holding feminism responsible for all the ills in society is wrong and short- sighted, and even in this day and age, women can't win. if they have a nervous breakdown due to over-work, feminism has "failed them" and by implication they have failed themselves by following the feminist dream rather than staying home like a good little wifey. if they achieve success they are obviously ballbreakers who have done so at the expense of their lovelives. etc, etc.

i guess the point i'll ultimately end up making is that holding feminism responsible for all the ills in society is wrong and short- sighted, and even in this day and age, women can't win. if they have a nervous breakdown due to over-work, feminism has "failed them" and by implication they have failed themselves by following the feminist dream rather than staying home like a good little wifey. if they achieve success they are obviously ballbreakers who have done so at the expense of their lovelives. etc, etc. and this is not feminism's fault at all, nor the fault of the women who belive that a homelife and a work life can both be theirs. it's the fault of a society (or, more specifically, a media) that, when all is said and done, is still for the most part hideously biased against women.

The problem it seems to me is a problem in the two-stage argument. Stage 1: The current power structure oppresses women. Stage 2: Women must achieve equality within this power structure. But of course the current power structure exists as it is precisely because of the reduction of women to an at-home servant-class: equality on the terms of the existing power structure leaves a vacuum which can only be filled by further economic exploitation. Of course this is pretty basic stuff (I've never read any feminist writings) and it's no fault of women or feminists that the power structure evolved in the way it did, but implicit in Dave Q's question is the question of whether the object of feminism should be/is to change this structure or simply to allow individual women to better exploit it.

don't believe me? read any corporate document championing 'diversity,' or the explanations tv news producers give when they're asked why they only hire babes to anchor their 6pm newscast, or even the whole crock of shit that is 'compassionate conservatism.'

how many feminist ideas are truly ingrained in the vernacular? look closely and you'll see not many, and it seems like gender politics are just sliding back further and further every day, from women-as-accoutrement in every fucking video to the new public persona of courtney love to the fact that my friend's brother-in-law took his 3 year old son to hooters for his birthday.

the 'how far do you want to go?' question has been one that's been a contentious point between all strands of feminism since its beginning, and it keeps coming up. and i guess the question that goes along with that is 'how willing are you to lose everything for your cause?' the problem from my point of view is that a lot of feminist leaders are already in a position of power, whether it's within the movement or within the culture at large (although it's usually both), and i'm not so sure how willing they'd be to give up those positions.

Feminism is much, much older than the 30 years Dave estimates. And the work of feminists is *far* from done, particularily in the developing world. In the developed world, ensuring that a female CEO earns as much as a male one is no different or less important than ensuring equality of access to any other thing, be it education, human rights, recourse under the law.

T-T raises an excellent point, in identifying the tendency of elites to reclassify a problem as a gender issue to make it less of a priority to the larger society. This bullshit happens all the time, particularily within areas where there is an assumed liberal bias. I have been in a number of situations where I have been debating points with a man re. feminism, and when his chips are down, he asks, 'what about racism?' or 'what about classism?' My answers have always been, 'Well, what about them? All of the 'isms' of the modern age are all about a privileged group trying to hoard privileges for themselves and their sons by any means necessary.'

What I cannot bear is to see the boys of the intellectual working class manifest their resentment for those with any kind of privilege by indulging in ideas which only serve the need of the privileged to divide and rule the so-called lower orders. Dave, if you attack women for the chaos of trying to make things properly equal, you are doing exactly that and you are a bigger TOOL of the establishment than you realise, even though you like to affect a general air of nonconformity.

To comment on some of the issues raised by Dave's questions - I don't think that feminists typically exhibit tendencies towards "new age murkiness" in a manner that's stronger or different to, say, Marxists, or even Dubya, for that matter. Surely Enlightenment rationalism = built on murk, albeit of an occasionally less generous kind? At any rate, the tendency towards meaningless sweeping statements seems to be more to do with the fact that a) the 'debate' has been dumbed down generally; and b) identity politics often inspires people to say stuff without really thinking it through first.

Katie: I suppose by absolute sexual difference I meant the easy acceptance that girls will be girls and boys will be boys being the unquestioned starting point of discussion - which gets more paradoxical, I think, as men increasingly articulate their own frustrations with them. And an insouciance about an underlying reality of an equal rights rhetoric that bears little relation to the choices women have to make, and the ways in which they're making them - and men too. However strong any individual's conviction of the existence of equality, and determination to live it, is, my baseline is always the structures and patterns of inequality and difference, and my job is to undermine their assumptons about unlimited agency/free will (joking - mostly).

Unless you work in a call centre, workers' rights have evolved from the indentured servitude you describe. This is about civil rights, which feminism makes great contributions to. First rule of feminism is it's there to make society better for everyone, as we are all indicted if anyone has their rights suppressed, including feminists.

*chortle chortle chuckle GUFFAW*

I have Asian friends who complain bigstyle about it, because their behaviour is monitored by other family members and they are threatened with issues of 'izzat' (pride) if they do something 'odd' eg. seek out non-arranged partners (one of my best friends, Satinder, is from a large and influential Southall family of big-in-the-gurdwara Sikhs and she worries about even being seen on the Tube with her WASP boyfriend). But if those parameters are not in effect then it's pretty cool.

I think I'd still be paranoid. It might be a matter of personality, but me, my parents and my sister were all I needed -- the rest of the relatives around would have slowly freaked me out, ick.

Ummmmm...no. At least not racism; that's far more complex than such a pat explanation can address. (For instance, though a white lesbian activist and an African-American male activist might well agree that they share a common enemy in white male heterosexuals, I daresay many of them also see each other as a priori enemies as well. And what about what some African-Americans think of Jews, and vice versa?) And I resent the chronic implication that majority = oppressors = "haves" = bad, minority = victims = "have-nots" = good. These sorts of arguments lack sophistication in their understanding of human nature.

If your privilege is based on the exploitation of others and you *realise* that but do nothing, then you're just as bad as the CEO of Nestle.

Anyone for shades of grey? Moral ambiguity? Nuance? I don't buy the above at all -- it's the sort of (by implication) you're-with-us-or-you're-against-us thing that I can' t stand.

Feminism as an agent of the emancipation of women from sociocultural prescriptions and sexual violence/harassment = classic. Feminism as an agent of critically examining gender roles and their relationship to who we are and how we behave = classic, at least sometimes. (Feminism as perspective and agent = classic. Feminism as ideology = dud, but so are all ideologies. Skepticism = classic.)

Where certain branches of it trip up, as do so many movements from every part of the philosophical spectrum, is its portrayal of the world purely in terms of power dynamics (which is (1) extremely limited if not just plain inaccurate and (2) utterly and totally joyless) and its frequent reliance on the identification, blame, and vilifcation of the "evil Other" -- a thing which basically DOESN'T EXIST (the occasional sociopath aside, perhaps), and the search for which (and punishment upon its presumed discovery) is responsible for a pretty high percentage of the woes with which the world is plagued by agencies ranging from the Nazi party to the church to nearly-any-case-of-racial-violence-you-care-to-name. "All men are rapists and that's all they are" (Marilyn French) = "the Jews poisoned the water supply and gave us the Black Plague" (commonly held opinion back then) = Godhatesfags.com. This is overstating it a bit, of course, but I trust my point is clear.

The thing is though that the logic of "making things properly equal" should lead to "nobody gets to have it quite so good anymore" rather than "now women get to have it just as good".

Doesn't technology trump that argument in the end, though? At least with wealth, and I don't follow your argument vis-a-vis power.

I think there is a degree to which this is true of, say, porn stars and strippers, who appropriate the language of feminism to say: "I am doing with my body what I choose to" -- but what they are choosing to do it put themselves in a situation that sometimes only serves to fuel misogyny and the thick-headed view of 'women as sex objects'. this is certainly *NOT* to let men off the hook for this manner of thinking, but merely to propose a possible way this 'appropriation of language' takes place.

I am not some trustafarian who adopts a do as I say, not as I do attitude with regard to others. I do actually walk it like I talk it.

I don't see how saying "Stop violence against women" means "Men have it great" but then, I tried to use logic, so you will have to tell me a better way of understanding your thought process here. Or did you just stop by to complain about how women are doing too much complaining?

:) OK it is not nice to argue with a 15 year old, but jeez, I'm a feminist and it is crazy when people tell me what I think and get it all wrong.

Is it anybody's fault? Are women less culpable than men?

and by 'men' do we mean the men alive now, or those around while the present system arose?
I don't think living men should be held any more responsible for what some section if society did before they were born than living women should.

I think the saying "the grass is always greener" applies here. At least a littl bit.

That's just one example of how society treats men as the disposable sex, and expects them to be the soldiers and garbagemen doing the most dangerous and unhealthy work, sacrificing health, happiness and family life for career. It's called "patriarchy" when men succeed in careers, but not when they also suffer in greater numbers, and not when they're doing it out of neccesity because it's their role to support the family at work much like it's the women's role to support a family at home. If you want to call that women's role sexist, fine, just apply the same standard to men and replace "husband" with "boss".

Feminism is built on those double standards. Another example of a cornerstone of feminism that is just not true: the "wage gap." If women earn 78 cents on the dollar a man gets, then men shouldn't do an average of 6-8 more years of work in their lifetime. They should get family leave benefits like women get maternity leave (the only workplace benefit that comes from a choice.) And let's bring gender equity to those most dangerous and unhealthy jobs where men make up the majority of workplace deaths and injuries ("the glass cellar.")
Lastly let's get rid of inheritance, where husbands (who society grants 7 years less life expectancy) leave those higher earnings to their wives.

Has anyone read Warren Farrell and what did you think?

Sorry to be righteous and pompous. I do it because that stuff is not the "accepted truth" that things like the wage gap are. Also I hate seeing people get fucked over. Especially by people posing as progressive, and people making false accusations of rape, violence, or patriarchy, and otherwise manipulating for greed.

Mainstream feminism = total dud. Feminism with class-consciousness, especially when applied to pre-capitalist society has good worth for analysis, but not as much prescription value. to me anyways.

In any case, even if you want to take the broader perspective and talk about all violence in general, it's hard to escape the conclusion that, whatever sex the victim, it's certain patterns of male behaviour that's the problem, and not female behaviour. Is it wrong for a woman to suggest that?

Domestic violence is overwhelmingly male on female? A quick google says some interesting stuff.

"In July 1994 the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice the results of a survey of family homicides released a Special Report detailing in 33 urban U.S. counties. The report covered ONLY convictions, which should respond to any contention that female-on-male family violence is almost always reactive. The report said:

"A third of family murders involved a female as the killer. In sibling murders, females were 15 percent of killers, and in murders of parents, 18 percent. But in spouse murders, women represented 41 percent of killers. In murders of their offspring, women predominated, accounting for 55 percent of killers.

Personally I grew up with an abusive female family member. After instigating fights the (mostly male) cops would be brought in. "Female victimisation" was the excuse for the males getting in trouble with the law and the courts and cops became a tool for manipulation. That doesn't happen the other way around.

(xpost)

Poverty among lower class women is worse in economic-reductionism terms. The other side is that men are the majority of all victims of workplace injury, sickness or death. It's higher pay for worse job conditions, and job security is also much worse.

The other side is that men are the majority of all victims of workplace injury, sickness or death. It's higher pay for worse job conditions, and job security is also much worse.

This might apply to some Western countries, yes, but not to most Third World countries where the majority of the world population lives.

Bill & Ted had it right. Be excellent to each other (dudes). It's the only way to go.

Other sides to that "double burden:"

-men are expected to work to take care of a family, but are denied the family caretaker role themselves if they want it. Their higher pay is a sacrifice to the family and they don't get to enjoy any of it. Especially when higher pay often means sacrificing health and happiness to the job, while the traditional women's roles could be said to provide the "psychic income" of family time. This goes for divorce cases too when men are most often denied child custody.

-There's hardly very many men who live at home supported by working wives. Working men who do more average hours than working women don't get family time.

-Men don't have access to other social support for families- alimony and child support, maternity leave benefits, or equal access to welfare. Homelessness might be good to bring up because it's much worse for men than women. So if women are treated like property in the home, at least they get taken care of while men are disposable.

Do women around the world have the shorter end of the stick? I disagree: 50 million women didn't die in war in the 20th century.

As for trying to raise these issues alongside female discrimination, fair enough, when they aren't being actively made invisible.

What sort of feminism are we talking about? The ILX approved kind where women can talk about shagging but men cannot because any and all straight male libidosm are inherently obscene and evil and must be censored? The sort of feminism that removes threads about Christina Aguilera and how shaggable she looks in her video? The sort of feminism that brands all pornography evil?

Or the sort of the feminism that doesn't waste time with such utter cock and instead spends its days trying to obtain equal wages and equal managerial standing for women?

Is it's the latter then I'm all for it.

If it's the sort of feminism that says women should be permitted to take 6 months off to raise kids but still be entitled to lead large businesses then I'm skeptical. It's one or the other if you ask me (and I know that might sound sexist, but I think if men want to play house-husband, and there are many, then it's the same thing. Capitalism sucks, I agree, but as long as that's society and feminism appears to have become OF society rather than working to CHANGE it, then I see no alternative).

This is a VERY good point: society consists of females and males.

as a consequence the issue of violence against men is now on the political agenda as a serious topic in itself: sucka's argument having weight is a consequence of mainstream feminism, not a counter to it

the work done in the politics of violence against women, and the politics of violence against non-conformist sexuality, has changed the sustance of shame and shaming, and rewritten the maps of belief

the more forms of power and resistance to power that exist in the world, the more varied opportunities there are for manipulative bullying, i suspect (hmm that sounds a bit gloomy, do i really think that?)

As for "slavery, c or d," it would be more like "owned slaves (women)vs. wage slaves (men): which is better"?

Yes I'm snotty, sorry.

(i.e. maybe it has less to do with "society" than it does mens' actual physiology?)

God, I swore I wasn't going to get involved in this thread, I swore, I swore, I swore...

Yeah, as arguments those types of comparisons are an A1 time-waster and mostly the best response is to treat them with ignore.

Because so many of Feminism's more sensible ideals *have* been absorbed into mainstream society, it ironically becomes easier to write off Feminism as a whole, or else concentrate on the more "extreme" issues.

Is this true? I'm not disagreeing, I just want to know if it's true.

Women don't have to accept their "place".

I don't think someone should get paid to look after their own kids. Similarly, people shouldn't get paid to clean their own houses, polish they're own cars or do their own dishes.
Also

Where can we get figures for male and female deaths by war?

Military casualties are a fraction of total casualties, though.

In WW2 you have

a) area bombing of Germany, Japan, UK
b) the Holocaust
c) pretty indiscriminate slaughter in China, Russia, and Eastern Europe
d) this is irrelevant cos it's so fucking stupid to talk about 'more men dying in wars'.

which i think sucka and blount are oddly both buying into.

anyway if you wanna do the demographic parsing poor women have it worse than poor men and women in general.

there is a problem with the whole argument about "family time" being denied men though -- sure it's the necc. counterpart of "workplace/social time" being denied women but it also relies on a certain valorization of "family time" which was one of the contradictory kernels in feminism to begin with -- arguing for the revision of valuation of social role to give more props to extant and historic gender roles of women.

Like I said.

Sigh.

You mean this?

This is a VERY good point: society consists of females and males.
-- mei (meirion.lewi...), December 5th, 2003.

I was responding to this:

Yes. Describing "male behavior" as a problem, neglects that society places men in a position of competition, and a role of disposability. Violence is a natural outcome of being deprived of security and safety. Sure it's not exactly women oppressing men but it is society oppressing men, a bi-sexist society.

I actually disagree with the sentiment of the bit about "Violence is a natural outcome": saying something is "natural" is a very weak excuse.

I think I might have misread "bi-sexist" as meaning "society is composed of people of both sexes".

What I'm trying to get across is that society is made up of EVERYONE, men and women.

If society discriminates against anyone then it's all our faults.

If someone says "women are unfairly paid less", then 'women' are just as much to blame for this state of affairs as 'men' are.

Stephanie Coontz to thread.

it also relies on a certain valorization of "family time" which was one of the contradictory kernels in feminism to begin with -- arguing for the revision of valuation of social role to give more props to extant and historic gender roles of women.

was that due to 'big tent'ism so as to not repulse the fha 'i have a job, i'm a homemaker' crowd or to make sure feminism didn't (re?)define women as 'just' victims?

Not too seriously though.

haha 'was this the face...'

...I don't consider two armies killing each other to be a result of "male behavior" but rather an issue of property and class. okay, and the difference is? afaik, this q is one of the central args within feminism (or was): which comes first; if women's oppression is a component in the total picture of oppression, or if women's subjugation is the model for all other classism, racism etc.

I find this a touch facile.

Feminism clearly is/was a very positive development, I think that goes without saying. But nothing's black and white and perhaps one of the negatives was to encourage the general worldview that when women do poorly it's because they're victims of men/society, but when men do poorly it's their own bloody fault. Women = passive victims, men = actively responsible for their own miseries. I remember doing a class in gender studies at university in the eighties, when girls did less well than boys at school. Various theories for this were put forward, on reflection some good, some preposterous in light of later developments. Then, a few years back, the trend started to reverse, and a new debate on why boys were performing poorly germinated. Lots of hand-wringing, lots of talk about the damaging effects of "lad culture", lots of talk about how girls are more responsible about studying, behave better in class, etc., very little talk about boys being victims of anything. They've brought it upon themselves with their silly lad culture, and anyway girls are better at that sort of stuff! I caricature, and yes there has been talk that there aren't enough male teachers, but I think I'm right in saying that the tenor of the debate is very different, that boys are hardly portrayed as passive victims in the way that girls were. Curiously, this most conventional stereotype has lived on even in more progressive discourses.

So if this doesn't have anything to do with external pressures of gender roles, what does that leave? Women are just naturally not as intelligent as men?

To be more facile still: a problem isn't a problem if there's a straightforward solution to it that everyone accepts.

No, Mark S, I think you've got the horse before the cart. It's feminism that's the outgrowth of an enlightenment discourse about social disparities. This discourse is a very good thing and feminism is/was a refinement of it, and it also is/was a very good thing. Which isn't to say that you can't say anything negative about it, and I was simply pointing out that one quite conventional stereotype has lived on in the discourse, and that this conventional stereotype wasn't very useful in tackling discrimination that men as a gender might face. Feminism was specifically developed to tackle discrimination specific to women as a gender, and I think we need to think about other tools as well to tackle problems men as a gender might face.

the other issue is that when it does get halfway serious, it boils down to the fact that people would be better served by reading a book or taking a sociology of gender class instead of arguing about stereotypes and misconceptions. there can't even be a meaningful dialog when people aren't even on the same page in terms of basic knowledge about the subject. i don't mean that it in an 'ooo people are sooo ignorant way' but i do mean it in a "wouldn't it be more productive to educate yourself a little on the topic before you go making sweeping statements about it?" i mean would you talk about Derrida in such an offhand way? (o wait, nevermind ;-)

please note this isn't posted 'at' anymore, it is a musing about the feminism thread and other threads of its ilk.

Nevermind the uppercut or the haymaker referred to before, I think this one is the stilletto slipped between the ribs, metaphorically speaking. Perhaps rather more effective, in its quiet way.

(anyway sorry to be a bit tart jonathan, it wz panic stations at work and i wz in the middle of thinking that one of my colleagues had fucked up and caused me loads of work - he hadn't) (quite the opposite in fact, oops)

I'd love to see a thread where none of the (often misunderstood) academic(?) terms are used: feminism, gender, socicalised, identity-politics, modernity, etc.

It doesn't help to look these up in a dictionary because what they mean to each person is quite different. I know that's true of most words, but these ones aren't used enough for people to get an accurate idea of what others mean by them.

I To clarify, I still want the ideas behind those words discussed, but with relevant explanations/alternatives used at each point instead of those evocative words.

So Blount I suddenly realized I think I read somewhere you were in the navy? I owe you an apology for some of my snotty remarks. Love to hear some opinions from you on your job. You said: "how many wars were started by women btw?"

to which I have to ask, do the people who start wars have more or less involvement than you, a person whose job might have you fighting the war? Do you feel like your job gives you any say in whether a war happens or not? Do you think the fact that fighting is done by hired labor in a capitalist contract change the motivation behind starting a war? What about the people who aren't fighting: do you feel like your job affects them, and do you think it's a privilege for them or not? Well, hey I guess I'm pretty demanding too.

oh my, thread of pure gold and KKKKrazy post deleting!
also, was toraneko for real?
Hey Maura, I reckon you're wrong. I reckon it was because they were fat, ugly, hairy bitches that couldn't get a man in the first place that they started the whinging.
-- toraneko, Thursday, November 15, 2001 5:00 PM (5 years ago)

Wow, those Toraneko posts are really wtf! At first I thought she was being highly ironic, but I'm not so sure anymore. Though it's kinda weird reading someone who (if I remember correctly) identifies herself as a lesbian complaining about how men don't make enough money anymore to support their wives and kids.

i couldn't stop reading the bit of the first post as "already well off white" women

As for feminism, classic of course. Obviously, as with any political movements, there have been some dubious strands in it, but mostly I think those who are sceptical of feminism have fallen for the bra-burning men-hater stereotype, which is really just counter-propaganda and has little to do with feminists of today. I can't see why anyone except very conservative women and men fearing the loss of their male privilege would call it dud in general.

My main "problem" with (ultra) feminism (or rather my inability to fully attach myself to it) is that it is always about some Utopia, some distant place and time which seems so unreachable. It's very hard to piss 'n' moan about the current state all the time, to confront people with this fact. I stopped doing this not because it's futile to fight, but because I realize that you have to be somewhat "content" now. It must be such a sad place if you're constantly angry all the time, constantly trying to go forward, without being able to enjoy the here 'n' now. So, no, I haven't really given up, instead I'm a moderate feminist.

Also, I don't find I can attach myself without knowing the full history. It's like talk about capitalism. Now I just ask my husband (who studied Political & Social Sciences).Most of the time I am left even more confounded and don't know what to choose.

I need to finish the second half of Judith Butler's book. I gave up. :-( I'm also reading Foucault's history of sexuality. Pretty good but he comes across as somewhat of a twat.

Now I just ask my husband (who studied Political & Social Sciences).Most of the time I am left even more confounded and don't know what to choose.

don't ask your husband he's only trying to brainwash you with his male-centric doctrine do you see!! :)

my problem is also that i always fall for the bra-burning man-hater type

Like much of the taradiddle procreated by the so-called social revolutions of the 60s, feminism’s major contribution to the public discourse has been the widening of the sphere of the unspeakable (as opposed to the sphere of the undoable). If only for that reason, it ought to merit everlasting dud status. But there is also how it has contributed to the reputational meltdown of the social sciences — very many people now considering them quaint fossils, their departments being populated by an omnium gatherum of ethnic minorities, sexual deviants and angsty middle-class whiteys with penis envy (if they are “female”) or penis embarrassment (if they are “male”).

Dude, it seems you don't know much about feminism at all. Also:

feminism’s major contribution to the public discourse has been the widening of the sphere of the unspeakable (as opposed to the sphere of the undoable).

What does this even mean?

how embarrassed are you about your penis, on a scale of 1 to 10?

xpost

i'm about 4

I mean, one of feminism's major contributions is that people have started to talk about stuff that was kept quiet earlier, like domestic violence, sexual abuse, etc.

only in the way they want to talk about it

xpost Oh really? I'm not even sure anymore. I don't think it was that unspeakable before. Reading Foucault's HoS confuses me so much. The more I read, the less i seem to know. :-(

Care to expand upon that, Jeb? I'm not sure how feminism did more to bring down the Social Science Department™ than, say, right wing pundits or, god forbid, their own refusal to commingle once in a while?

And I have to echo Tuomas, I'm not even sure what the first part of your paragraph means. You seem to be painting with pretty wide strokes.

Dude, it seems you don't know much about feminism at all. Also:

“feminism’s major contribution to the public discourse has been the widening of the sphere of the unspeakable (as opposed to the sphere of the undoable).”

What does this even mean?

Grammatical errors and all. ;-)

jeb wtf are you talking about? its not "muzzling its ostensible opposition"--its shifting societal values such that opinions like "women arent good at math due to biological reasons" are no longer "mainstream."

stevie i dont think either foucault or butler is interested a "utopia" at all! in fact that would be totally counter-intuitive considering their own theoretical commitments. foucault especially is way more concerned with the day-to-day, material concerns of oppression and the mechanisms of power.

Whatever, max. What I'm really looking for is a belief system that allows me to be angry and affronted all the time. Do you recommend feminism? I heard it's good.

ban nude spock

laurel i highly recommend feminism for being a fat ugly hairy bitch

now let me really 'widen the sphere of the unspeakable': Tuomas otm

xp Awesome. Let me check with my husband and get back to you.

jeb wtf are you talking about? its not "muzzling its ostensible opposition"--its shifting societal values such that opinions like "women arent good at math due to biological reasons" are no longer "mainstream."

hey, way to revive a thread, ilx! This will be useful.

As someone once said, good job.

ok 'Jeb' why don't we cut past all that: are women, in the aggregate, worse at math due to biological reasons?

The way this is being derailed going, Tuomas is going to have to start a new thread in the morning with a post that goes something like

"I didn't know there were so many committed feminists here! Let's sit down and discuss whether we prefer Germaine Greer or Maya Angelou!"

and be called something like

It's not necessarily all about penises (a question for the ladies) (and the men too because I am not sexist)

ok 'Jeb' why don't we cut past all that: are women, in the aggregate, worse at math due to biological reasons?

“In January 2005, Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, unintentionally provoked a public controversy when MIT biologist Nancy Hopkins leaked comments he made at a closed economics conference at the National Bureau of Economic Research.[25] [26] [27] In analyzing the disproportionate numbers of men over women in high-end science and engineering jobs, he suggested that, after the conflict between employers' demands for high time commitments and women's disproportionate role in the raising of children, the next most important factor might be the above-mentioned greater variance in intelligence among men than women, and that this difference in variance might be intrinsic,[28], adding that he "would like nothing better than to be proved wrong". The controversy generated a great deal of media attention, forced Summers to resign, and led Harvard to commit $50 million to the recruitment and hiring of women faculty.”

If this is not PC bullshit, what is? Etc.

After the huge societal inequalities that lead young black men into prison at higher rates proportionally than any other group in the country, the next most important factor might be that they're genetically disposed toward crime. I mean--I would like nothing more than to be proven wrong.

p.s. "feminism" means a LOT of different things to a lot of different people and it doesnt really make sense to include, like, susan b. anthony AND simone de beauvoir AND bell hooks AND judith butler AND my mom under the big tent of "feminism" since they dont really all agree on all that much.

Max OTM. I think it's quite reasonable to compare feminism to anti-racism. Both are labels for sets of varying political worldviews which are united in recognizing a historical ineuqality in our societies, and wanting to correct this inequality, even through such means as positive discrimination or affirmative action (which some people call inequal in themselves, but it's only so if you look at them from a totally ahistorical point of view). Of course some rash judgements and false moves have been made in the name of femininism or antiracism, but that happens with everyhting. However, to call feminism dud because of individual cases like the one Jeb cites is like calling all men chauvinist pigs because a few of them act that way. If you believe that men and women shoud be equal in political, economical and social level, you're already a feminist even if you don't call yourself that.

p.s. "feminism" means a LOT of different things to a lot of different people and it doesnt really make sense to include, like, susan b. anthony AND simone de beauvoir AND bell hooks AND judith butler AND my mom under the big tent of "feminism" since they dont really all agree on all that much.

If you believe that men and women shoud be equal in political, economical and social level, you're already a feminist even if you don't call yourself that.

But feminism is by definition just about the goal, not about the means. It's not as narrow as socialism, because socialism isn't just about equality, it's about a certain type of equality. Whereas in feminism you liberal, socialist, anarchist, postcolonial, etc. strands. Sure you can call it ideology, if you see all forms of striving for equality as ideologies, but it's a different sort of a ideology than socialism.

i don't see how you can even discuss 'feminism', as someone said upthread it's just too many different attitudes under one heading.

Jeb the summers affair seems like old news to air out here, tbh. and i doubt me sparring with you will do much. there's a good catalog of the responses to all that here:

http://anitaborg.org/news/archive/chronicle-of-a-controversy

if anyone is really interested any more. to point out the case of an unpopular university president being 'hounded' out of his post after making some (to at least be charitable) 'impolitic' statements, as if this a crime of "feminism," is specious at best.

Feminism, in whatever its form or formulation in whatever historical moment, has been an absolute benefit for humanity, full stop. even after evualuating the murky and heavily class-based politics of l'affaire summers, there's no question in my mind about that, big picture.

Jeb i wish you'd come off the "hey just pointing things out/just asking questions" game and say what it is you're after. are women just not as bright as men, or what? is feminism, however you define it, a benefit, or a menace?

Feminism: cool with me.

i'm all for compassionate feminism

wait no, i meant compassionate misogyny

i'm all for humanism, without favouritism.

i don't like jism.

your line about the ultimate unforgivable crime of feminism being "increasing the sphere of the unspeakable" is straight-up white-dude privileged bs, btw. it maps exactly with the horror that black men are "allowed" to say ho while big-name radio hosts are not -- it's absolutely not about finding decency and parity in a complex society, it's about defending the power to define what is off limits in the common language, and who can be forgiven for saying what to whom: "nobody gets to dictate to ME what's offensive!! THAT'S SO UNFAIR"

what is it you'd like to say, that is now behind the rapidly advancing feminist spear-wall?

i don't like jism.

uh oh, angry lesbian.

The people who say that are wrong because they don’t understand the concept of useful generalizations.

Not really. Generalization is useful only if you want to simplify matters in the sense of dumbing them down. To generalize feminism or communism or jism is surely going to distort and diminish the complex individual concepts more than anything else? Although I'm not sure I know what you're saying, because

If you believe that men and women shoud be equal in political, economical and social level, you're already a feminist even if you don't call yourself that.

This is like suggesting that someone is automatically a socialist just because he favors, say, greater economic equality. Not so. He may share the goal, but he sure as hell does not agree with the means.

that seems to contradict what you said before? An artist can say they're not part of a movement, but have enough ties with it to rightly be called part of that movement, but someone having the adequate ties to feminist thought doesn't make them a feminist? What means are inherent to the vague tag of feminism?

Classic:

Suffrage
More equitable pay and employment
The right to initiate divorce
Safe, legal abortion
The right to obtain contraceptives
The term "Ms."

MS PAINT

gff is one the money!

so are others, obv

Yes, MS Paint is a feminist achievement!!

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v216/sexymollusk/fempaint.jpg

some fat, ugly, hairy bitch cut off that poor man's legs. :(

lol jeb u all kinds of dum

why do ppl still bother arguing with roger adultery

Jeb's Roger Adultery?

might as well be, he's denied it i think.

He's called "Jeb".

"Jeb" because "Johnny Reb" was a little too obvious

I don't get it, does the word "Jeb" have some special meaning?

But feminism is by definition just about the goal, not about the means. It's not as narrow as socialism, because socialism isn't just about equality, it's about a certain type of equality. Whereas in feminism you liberal, socialist, anarchist, postcolonial, etc. strands. Sure you can call it ideology, if you see all forms of striving for equality as ideologies, but it's a different sort of a ideology than socialism.

Jeb i wish you'd come off the "hey just pointing things out/just asking questions" game and say what it is you're after. are women just not as bright as men, or what?

is feminism, however you define it, a benefit, or a menace?

Now how is this different to feminism? “Well, it isn’t.” My point exactly.

Sometimes ILX really is like lining up all your imaginary friends and having a tea party!

Aw come on at my high teas we actually talk about cool stuff, like how to better secure volleyball nets. Velocitus Happenstance has some good ideas on it. Frankie Beans, however, is kind of full of shit.

i think it's stoopid when people have a go at "feminism" it's a pretty broad church.

must

fight

urge

to join

clusterfuck feminism thread

jeb u didnt really answer this point--

that seems to contradict what you said before? An artist can say they're not part of a movement, but have enough ties with it to rightly be called part of that movement, but someone having the adequate ties to feminist thought doesn't make them a feminist? What means are inherent to the vague tag of feminism?

and hey feel free to wear your inner troglodyte on your sleeve!!

<I>stevie i dont think either foucault or butler is interested a "utopia" at all! in fact that would be totally counter-intuitive considering their own theoretical commitments. foucault especially is way more concerned with the day-to-day, material concerns of oppression and the mechanisms of power.</I>

Oh no, I realize that. I was being a bit vague in my statement (partially because I am well aware of the fact I know very little about feminism nor my belief in it). I was dragging Foucault and Butler in my statement because that's what I was/am reading at this moment. Honestly, though, I really haven't decided yet... I am forever swinging both ways (Ken C can now interpret this in a totally pervy way!)

But isn't feminism more about a GOAL (or utopia)? I always see it as this, forever chasing that always distant perfect world which is, let's be honest, unreachable. You can prove me wrong, no problem with that, but that's how I see feminism and that's why I am sometimes a little bit... I don't know, sad about it? I look at Laurel and see how angry she is, how defensive she is about her beliefs and on the one hand I really admire that but on the other hand I think: "WTF, how tiring." (Not as a criticism, mind you, but as a... perception?) I often wonder how people like Greer, Butler,... really lead their daily life. How do you "marry" your academic/professional life (which is focused on feminism and battling sexism,...) and then on the other hand live with that knowledge in your day to day life, y'know. It really interests me.

I'm blabbering.

It helps if you killfile a bunch of people, actually. Speaking of which, which of your logins is the store one, and which is at home?

Just kidding. I'm not that angry in real life, is the thing. I really believe that we have to be mindful of shit and speak on it b/c otherwise we are tacitly condoning it. Who knows, I was raised as a sort of crazy Evangelical Christian, they think they have to go through every second of every day trying to be more like Christ -- for me it's a good day if I'm trying to be more like myself.

And I mean that's a distant unreachable goal if there ever was one, at least in this life on Earth. So maybe I just expect that life is full of ideals to aspire to and I'm okay with that, it's the journey not completion, blah blah.

Hah. Angry is probably an exaggeration, just how I sometimes perceive you in these type of threads, which, I repeat isn't a (negative) criticism, more... an admiration. I know this is the worng (contorted?) perception, because, like you just said, you aren't like that in "real" life. Still I find it admirable when people are gung ho (?) about their beliefs. I sort of gave up once I entered my 30s. :-( Which I know is a shitty attitude, because I am condoning a lot of shit I would have stood up against if I was younger.

Nathalie: main computer.
Stevie Nixed: every other comp. I couldn't remember my main password, only the Stevie Nixed one.

Killfile away. :-)

Nathalie, if we were all waiting to understand a thing perfectly in order to live it, would anything ever get done? If you refused to get pregnant until you were sure you could be a perfect parent, or refused to get married unless you were sure you and your spouse would never be unfaithful or fall out of love, where would you be? Etc.

For me feminism isn't an ideological impossibility that I must look to the academics to tell me about before I can vote for it, it's speaking up in my daily life and trying to make choices that support women and other people whose rights aren't respected, and questioning the gender/social/political/religious status quo.

Which mostly isn't that terrible living in NYC b/c the bulk of my peers here are not going to be all "WOMEN IN POSITIONS OF LEADERSHIP?? POPPYCOCK! PLS TO FOLLOW GOD'S PLAN" like what I felt where I grew up. But there's still no shortage of bullshit.

Yr good people Laurel.

For me feminism isn't an ideological impossibility that I must look to the academics to tell me about before I can vote for it, it's speaking up in my daily life and trying to make choices that support women and other people whose rights aren't respected, and questioning the gender/social/political/religious status quo.

This is very true. Even if I believed in some feminist utopia, I'd have to admit that it isn't very likely to happen during my lifetime, so trying to change little things in my everyday life, plus going to demonstrations and working with feminist organizations is the best I can do. I don't think anyone needs to devote her whole life to feminism to be a proper feminist, just recognizing the power structures around us and speaking up when you feel you should is enough. The fact that gender affects almost everything around us may feel overwhelming, but it also means resistance can be done everywhere. Sexism is much more about (often unnoticed) everyday practice than about some conspiracy of men.

some feminist utopia

sounds interesting....pls describe...

(Reason I ask is cos I relate to environmental issues better because the imagined outcome is less abstract to me...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnJxqRLg9x0&feature=player_embedded

Video 90% otm!

On Twitter wars between feminists -- seems familiar.

Yet even as online feminism has proved itself a real force for change, many of the most avid digital feminists will tell you that it’s become toxic. Indeed, there’s a nascent genre of essays by people who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in it—not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists. On January 3, for example, Katherine Cross, a Puerto Rican trans woman working on a PhD at the CUNY Graduate Center, wrote about how often she hesitates to publish articles or blog posts out of fear of inadvertently stepping on an ideological land mine and bringing down the wrath of the online enforcers. “I fear being cast suddenly as one of the ‘bad guys’ for being insufficiently radical, too nuanced or too forgiving, or for simply writing something whose offensive dimensions would be unknown to me at the time of publication,” she wrote....

(T)here’s a norm that intention doesn’t matter—indeed, if you offend someone and then try to explain that you were misunderstood, this is seen as compounding the original injury. Again, there’s a significant insight here: people often behave in bigoted ways without meaning to, and their benign intention doesn’t make the prejudice less painful for those subjected to it. However, “that became a rule where you say intentions never matter; there is no added value to understanding the intentions of the speaker,” Cross says.

There are also rules, elaborated by white feminists, on how other white feminists should talk to women of color. For example, after Kendall’s #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag erupted last fall, Sarah Milstein, co-author of a guide to Twitter, published a piece on the Huffington Post titled “5 Ways White Feminists Can Address Our Own Racism.” At one point, Milstein argued that if a person of color says something that makes you uncomfortable, “assume your discomfort is telling you something about you, not about the other person.” After Rule No. 3, “Look for ways that you are racist, rather than ways to prove you’re not,” she confesses to her own racial crimes, including being “awkwardly too friendly” toward black people at parties.

http://www.thenation.com/article/178140/feminisms-toxic-twitter-wars

The left will always eat itself to some extent. Just gotta own it.

Morbius

Feminist Theory & "Women's Issues" Discussion Thread: All Gender Identities Are Encouraged To Participate

http://womenagainstfeminism.tumblr.com/

Discuss.

http://33.media.tumblr.com/faade5ac24ba94974ff7e3fc50942216/tumblr_nce677RTC71syitgfo1_500.jpg

I honestly don't even know where to start with these idiots.

i dont need feminism because:

--I dont understand what structural inequality is
--I am on the winning side of patriarchy (for now)
--sometimes men are nice to me?
--i have little to no historical consciousness

Yes.

https://twitter.com/NoToFeminism

ryan otm

http://40.media.tumblr.com/09198f29a631af61191f2397c4fff802/tumblr_na866cAJx61syitgfo1_500.jpg

This doesn't even make any sense. None of them do. Brb I need to go kill myself now.

That twitter account. Dying.

Anyway, women's rights battles are for those ppl too, whether they acknowledge it or not. Feminism has given them the opportunity to be in a position to say those things, to not experience or not perceive that they experience discrimination. That's okay. Odds are at some point in their lives they'll fall out of that protected status because of something, and their views may change.

maybe there is some site where you can pay people to hold up handwritten signs with nonsense of your choosing and all of these people have been hired by reddit

that's unusually optimistic of you nakh

I wonder if you asked Ms. Guns & Coffee there why her shirt happens to be pink what her answer would be.

I'm going to totally make an educated guess about this woman because of the fact she has SEVEN CHILDREN and looks to barely be on the other side of 30 — religious fundie tea partier.

"Women Against Feminism" was much more pro-women in the old days of Women's Lib - those women didn't argue that women were weak and inferior. Just that they didn't need liberating, OR women's domestic role should be celebrated etc. this new breed is so submissive - anti-empowerment!

oh right, guns and coffee, that makes sense.

coffee gun pow pow pow

those poses are redolent of the mid 2000s 419 scammer counterscams where people were tricked into holding up pieces of paper with humiliating written messages

http://img71.photobucket.com/albums/v215/lowbridge/gloria.jpg

this racially dubious internet subculture was mostly based in the uk so if you gis 419 scammer you see a lot of west african and sometimes south asian people holding up signs saying 'twat' and 'wanker' and so forth

since then it has become a staple of 'progressive' movements the world over yet they always remind me of 419 baiting

Don't know where to put this, now I'm putting it here. Feminism vary classic imo.

Just finished Living Dolls - The Return of Sexism by Natasha Walter, and highly recommend it.

The first part of the book deals with the sexism of popular, sexualised images of women in contemporary culture and features interviews with, amongst others, "glamour models", editors of "lads' magazines", former lap-dancers, young women who feel excluded from society for distancing themselves from these images. It makes a convincing case that the sexualised representation of women is harmful for gender equality. These are not necessarily controversial points - although some of them may be dismissed by sex-positive feminists - but Walter's journalistic approach makes for an emotionally engaging read.

The second part of the book deals with biological determinism. It's very well argued and feels extremely relevant - basically it debunks a lot of the legitimacy from biology/evolutionary psychology etc. that sustains popular sexist discourse in the media. Walter's approach is again journalistic. After documenting the way biological determinism works in popular media Walter looks up the sources and finds that there is no documentation that testosterone, oxytocin etc. contributes to stereotypical male/female behavior, and that research into male/female cognition has yet to find significant differences between the sexes - points that are supported through interviews with biologists, psychologists, linguists etc. While it may not come as a surprise that biological determinism is bullshit, Walter's book is full of great examples of exactly how these myths arise, how they're supported by popular media etc. Pretty handy to know the scientific fallacies in studies about female/male spatial cognition next time someone suggests that women can't read maps bcz that's just in the genes lulz.

Anyway, I'd like to reread and memorize a lot of the points - but instead I'll look up some of the interesting books recommended by Walter throughout Living Dolls: Brain Gender by Melissa Hines, The Myth of Mars and Venus by Deborah Cameron and Myths of Gender by Anne Fausto-Sterling.

lol very* classic

what does ilx think of this woman's opinion?

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/why-are-young-feminists-so-clueless-about-sex/article26950887/

uh oh!

The only context to discuss anything from Margaret Wente is to understand that she in Canada's leading anti-science, anti-environment, populist troll.

even looks like Katie Hopkins

not that on this of all threads a woman should be judged on her appearance

"It’s hard to take anybody seriously when she’s droning on about oppression, colonialism and imperialism, especially when she’s uptalking."
-Margaret Wente

Wente's been caught plagiarising others so frequently that now she just repeats herself. Trots out a column lecturing us about hook-up culture etc every couple of months. Usually name-checks Gloria Steinmen then asks what went wrong with feminism, then explains why young people are so unhappy. We got this last when Trainwreck came out. This old lunatic needs to retire.

read as far as http://www.theglobeandm...

i need to know what the nutcases are talking about. you know, keep your friends closer, enemies closer type of thing.

peggy is out of control, though. was wondering if what she was talking about was even a dialogue feminists were having these days, but she seems out of the loop.

Dumb article, but I have to admit I had a similar reaction at least to the opening of the NYMag piece in question -- wasted sex is more likely than not to be bad and perhaps an anecdote about it is not the best setup for an article about how gender power imbalance results in bad consensual sex.

What is the origin of all these "No, Women Can't Have it All" pieces that pop up ad infinitum? Was there once a piece that said "Women Can Have it All?" The first time I remember this coming up at all was in the context of some mainstream news magazine cover asking "Can Women Have it All?" already kind of challenging the idea, and I want to say it was at least 15-18 years ago that I remember seeing that.

"Women Can Have it All?"

there's a book iirc

that was supposed to read "Can Women Have it All?" obvs. It just feels like people are beating a dead cliché at this point, so to speak.

1982
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fbackstorywriting.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F08%2Fhaving-it-all.jpg&f=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/magazine/the-complicated-origins-of-having-it-all.html

huh, well that p much explains it, thx