Wtf is feminism these days?!
Seriously, I have no clue what the hell feminism is supposed to be these days. You can't get an adequate definition without someone calling bullshit.
What's worse is that there are those feminists that expect everyone else to be feminists with them, and then there's other feminists that believe that non-females are incapable of being feminists.
So what is feminism? A common definition is that of a desire for gender-equality, and yet this is often a ridiculed position within certain feminist circles. If we can come to an agreement as to what feminism is, has feminism accomplished its goals? Is the notion of the Patriarchy a legitimate notion? Is feminism still needed today?
As a dude, what do feminists want me to do exactly?
What's worse is that there are those feminists that expect everyone else to be feminists with them, and then there's other feminists that believe that non-females are incapable of being feminists.
So what is feminism? A common definition is that of a desire for gender-equality, and yet this is often a ridiculed position within certain feminist circles. If we can come to an agreement as to what feminism is, has feminism accomplished its goals? Is the notion of the Patriarchy a legitimate notion? Is feminism still needed today?
As a dude, what do feminists want me to do exactly?
Comments (152)
Well, my bright-eyed child, you wouldn't like the answer...
According to my wife, it is what women in her generation attempted to advocate as to gain an even playing field and that girls under that age of 25 have tossed aside in their attempts of become fashion models.
Meow!
GREG
1) Die
2) Rot in prison
Anyone who tells you something else is wanted of you is lying.
'B...but that can't be true! Not all women!' Uh huh.
I have no clue what the hell philosophy is supposed to be these days. You can't get an adequate definition without someone calling bullshit.
If this counts as philosophy, I'm calling bullshit.
Why would you think that a major movement that could include more than half the population of the world would easily submit to a convenient all encompassing definition for your benefit? A movement moreover whose very success and progress includes, by necessity a change to the very structure of society and of the movement itself. Feminism is not a single group, it is not a political party and is more than a political and social movement; it is all these things and more; an attitude, an approach and a way of thinking.
Hey, I stuttered and had a lisp when I was younger. I still stutter sometimes. Perhaps it's a sign of an open mind?
yeah, I was just having a laugh. TGW's last post seemed pretty ridiculous to me, though maybe he was joking too.
In general, feminism is “the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.”
So 'all women want all men dead or in prison' actually means women, in general, labor to maintain a institutional status quo which kills and imprisons men?
For the sake of argument, I'll assume there's some truth to what you're saying. Is the 'kingdom of ends' of this institutional drive the death or imprisonment of all men? That doesn't make any sense to me at all. But I can't come up with any other charitable interpretation of your statement that the only thing all women want of all men is for them to be dead or in prison. (My grandmother, for instance, pays a man to mow her lawn. So I think your assertion needs some revision. Women want all men to either be dead, in prison, or available for lawn mowing.)
Well, the claim that all women want all men dead or in prison is a bit histrionic (I'm still not sure if you're serious) so, to suggest the absurdity of the claim, I pointed out just one other thing women want of men, and even made it one that doesn't require women respecting them in any way- a spoonful of misandry to help the medicine go down.
What else do women think men are good for?
There's a whole big blooming bundle of things. It's clearly not the case that all women want all men dead or in prison. Are you trolling?
Sex;Getting Groceries;Talking with;Songwriting;Vacationing with;Raising children;Playing Sports;Banking;Grabbing drinks with;Cooking;Camping with;Filmmaking;Sleeping next to;Writing;Emotional Support; Joking with;
idk, a lot of things. Obviously not all women think all men are good for all these things, in the same way not all women think all men are only good for being dead and being in jail.
I guess strictly speaking that's true. As men, I guess we can never know for sure. Similarly, as a white person, I can never know whether any black people value anything at all. As a gentile, idk about the jews. Sure they say they value x, & they act like they do, but who knows what their true motivation is??
Quoting darthbarracuda
I never said men need to be anything. You asked what feminism wants out of you as a man, and that is the answer.
All the time.
Is it really so self-evident to you that all women hate all men, that you think, by asking someone if women act like they value men, you've backed them into an inescapable corner?
I've known very few women who don't value men for anything beyond their muscles (whether used to raise houses or raze enemy cities) so it's difficult for me to understand where you're coming from.
Quoting csalisbury
If women loved men, they would be actively appalled at men's state in the world. But they aren't; they understand that their livelihood depends on it. No men, literally no buildings. You will never be anything but a tool to women, but because you recognize that they have the upper ground, you understand it's in your interest to ingratiate yourselves to them and be a 'good man' (and the only good man is a...)
#staywoke
If you wanna play the game of finding the hidden motives underlying what's being said, that's fine, we can do that. But I think you're savvy enough to understand how easy it would be to furnish an equally simple explanation for the anger you've shown here.
.
Quoting csalisbury
I don't really think the motives are hidden. Maybe I'm wrong about your super special idiosyncratic way of viewing the world. Maybe you act exactly like everyone else but for secret internal reasons opposed to theirs. Alright, but I'm not a mind-reader.
Yeah, I mean, nothing that I've said on this thread strikes me as particularly idiosyncratic (though it was nice what I did with that raise/raze thing right? Using a pair of homophones to capture the only two things men are purportedly good for? Thought that was pretty dope)
But, in any case, that's the point, your motives don't seem all that hidden to me either. So if you want to keep going forward with this, here's my interpretation: I don't think you know very much about what women are actually like, because you haven't spent very much time with women and they don't seem to want to spend time with you and I think that makes you very mad at women.
I don't feel any anger toward particular women, and I get along just fine day to day. I don't know many women, but I don't know many people generally, to be honest. That's a fine interpretation, I don't think it's quite right, but you're entitled to it.
Also, I wasn't saying your views expressed here were idiosyncratic. Rather that they were perfectly ordinary and predictable from someone of your general phenotype, yet you seem eager to shunt the diagnosis and treat it as an idiosyncrasy -- that you have a deeper insight into the workings of individual people, and that your opinion isn't just the result of your various demographic positions.
TGW, there's a vast difference between the chattering class feminist (educated, economically stable, and socially privileged) and the uneducated, impoverished, and socially disadvantaged woman who has never read so much as a feminist pamphlet in her life. Likewise with men: There's a lot of distance between the well educated, well employed, and economically stable man and the guy whose job prospects relocated to Sri Lanka, is disconnected from society, and is broke.
A lot of what privileged feminists talk about is irrelevant to anyone outside their social class, if not to themselves.
What are psycho-social relations like between the sexes in the non-privileged layers of society? Well, under the stress of not nearly enough money to go around, numerous and continuous frustrations, and family histories loaded with difficulties... NOT TOO GOOD. This isn't a result of "feminism" or "feminist theory". It's a result of economic flat-lining for many people. Economically, they're dead meat. Neither men nor women hold up well under these circumstances.
There are social-sexual female roles in society that are deserving of severe criticism. But... you've got to tease out bad behavior that is frivolously voluntary and bad behavior which is the result of really bad circumstances.
But I understand a little bit better where you're coming from though. You're pinning me as the sensitive guy who, listen, I understand you, you as a person, you as someone with a soul, unlike those other animals, those jocks for whom you're just a piece of meat. You're aiming at the wrong target entirely. I've never been a m'lady type.
Rape, alimony, infidelity. Reality of the dimorphism of the sexes that upper-cass people can't comprehend because they've never experienced it.
Quoting Bitter Crank
We're all dead meat; but men are especially dead and especially meat. And the suffering of men and the success of women are deeply entwined. The reverse may also be true, and we can even agree with feminists on that. But as a man I think it's fair to present it from a male perspective.
Quoting csalisbury
I don't really think it's an act, I think these things are part of the air people breathe. You believe and do whatever you were born into. Ingratiation with women by men (and self-denigration by men) is just a cultural trope, that becomes more prevalent the whiter, more liberal, more educated, etc. the demographic. There is a kind of falsity to it, but it's a deeply ingrained falsity. You've gotta have the 'man bad woman good line' somewhere in a popular work in the media, that's just how it works, it's like the invocation of the muses, part of the cultural makeup. I don't doubt that you don't experience yourself as part of any such thing.
Quoting csalisbury
I don't think it's a m'lady type, so much as, a David Foster Wallace fan, I guess would be the best way to put it. However you want to interpret that. There is a kind of misogyny that the m'lady type buys into that the DFW fan sees himself as above (because he is more sincere, self-critical, and empathetic than that).
Again, though, I'm not a fan of the man bad woman good thing. I'm not sure if I'm getting through. let me try it in italics. Women are as shitty as men. They're also as nice to hang out with as men, if you click. Again, I think you're severely missing the mark here. Women self-denigrate all the time, even in the company of men, and women who don't, or can't, or won't, drive me crazy. You can only relax and enjoy the company of people who are as aware of their flaws as they are confident in expressing their strengths. That's what makes a good fire or dinner or whatever.
[quote=tgw]I don't think it's a m'lady type, so much as, a David Foster Wallace fan, I guess would be the best way to put it. However you want to interpret that. There is a kind of misogyny that the m'lady type buys into that the DFW fan sees himself as above (because he is more sincere, self-critical, and empathetic than that)[/quote]
Ok, that's fair. But that's only one side of me (the side probably most on display here.) I certainly don't do a DFW routine to pick up women, because that'd be stupid. (though maybe it works in academia?)
Alright, if I was one of those leftist types, I'd say this is classic petit-bourgeois or whatever, you get the idea. It's not just a matter of individuals -- there is a way in which men are expected to be self-denigrating (and in virtue of their being men, this is the crucial part; we are all called on by women to collectively make fun of men on our own behalf for the amusement / appeasement of women, and devalue our own lives in various ways) that is not expected of women, and men are expected to take jokes and insults at their own expense (and physical harm!) in a way women are not. Surely you'll admit that's a trend that transcends individual people not being able to take a joke etc.
Quoting csalisbury
I think what works in academia is being stable and attractive an unthreatening, which most people in academia are, and then complaining that it's soooo hard to have kids and the travel is just ugh! and why don't we get paid more for being literally the most valuable people in society? You probably also want to make smug comments about poor and uneducated people disguised as comments about 'republicans' or whatever, and then behave in such a way in public that it's not always clear to people who don't know you that you're a couple, since romance and friendship are all equally flaccid and indistinguishable.
That's all just in good fun. ^
Yeah the dumb dad is a common mainstream-media trope, sure. (Modern Family would be the perfect example. The dad in Beethoven. Clark Griswold) The ditz and the oprah-mom are both, also, common mainstream-media tropes. The real sin, today, is taking your societal/familial role seriously. Jim & Pam, from the Office, provide the non-gender-specific mainstream ideal.
[quote=tgw]I think what works in academia is being stable and attractive an unthreatening, which most people in academia are, and then complaining that it's soooo hard to have kids and the travel is just ugh! and why don't we get paid more for being literally the most valuable people in society? You probably also want to make smug comments about poor and uneducated people disguised as comments about 'republicans' or whatever, and then behave in such a way in public that it's not always clear to people who don't know you that you're a couple, since romance and friendship are all equally flaccid and indistinguishable.
That's all just in good fun. ^[/quote]
That makes sense to me. I'm a bit confused, though, because dropping 'all in good fun' usually means that you think the person to whom you're speaking might have been offended.
I think the dumb dad trope is part of it, but only at its most superficial and benign. It's an increasingly important part of virtue signaling, social acceptance, and displaying culture for young men, especially liberal and/or educated young men, to engage in non-trivial self-flagellation for being a man that goes beyond jibes and gets into legitimate self-hatred, and it seems like this trend is only going to get more severe and mainstream as time goes on. And I think this is linked to the violence and death men are expected as a routine to suffer, while women are seen as 'metaphysical victims' with a birthright that protects them even from insult just as it does from violence, and their privilege of being the 'better half' both of the marriage and of humanity.
Quoting csalisbury
No, it's in case I get audited at some point in the future and some poor schmuck is reading through my whole online history.
Ivory Tower seems v scary if that's the case.
Feminism is a political and social movement which focuses on sexual equality, obtaining power for women, and dismantling patriarchy (generally speaking). Most histories of the movement begin with what is termed "first wave feminism", which was the fight for female suffrage but has flowered into a much wider umbrella.
There are many kinds of feminisms and feminists -- it's good to be mindful of that. There is no monolithic feminism to contend with -- feminists disagree with one another. Pleasing one group of feminists, if such is your goal, won't please another group and vice versa.
I am a feminist for several reasons. But what began my identification down that path a long time ago was a desire to not play out certain male roles and to not be constrained by certain male roles which I think are damaging to healthy living. In addition I generally believe in equality, and so find that to be a worthwhile goal on all fronts.
Some of the things which feminists have set out to do have been accomplished, and some haven't -- again, depending on the feminist group you are talking to. Since it is a social and political movement it's not quite amenable to sharp definition, or even to clear-cut consensual goals. But this is true of any social or political movement, and is far from unique to feminism. So to answer the title question -- wtf is up with feminism is feminism is a social and political movement, and not a singular philosophical thesis, and so it's going to contain a multiplicity of viewpoints, opinions, desires, expressions, goals, and so forth, and probably won't be amenable to the clean-cut treatment -- at least, as a movement, if not for a particular feminist philosophy -- which we tend to enjoy as philosophically inclined people.
Burn your bra.
I like some of the Riot Grrrl bands who were influenced by third wave feminism: Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Bikini Kill, L7, Jack Off Jill, Bitch Alert.
There is a lot of low-grade conflict. There is this expectation of service, for instance. Men are supposed to take care of women, while at the same time the women maintain they are fully equal and capable. It's a no win situation for either party. A lot of young women seem to want husbands (or partners) who are like their mature fathers. Except of course, their parents are 20 to 30 years older, and have had time to work out roles with each other. The boys and girls are not mature yet, and won't be for quite some time (sometimes never), so it is another no-win situation.
In the US, women who can manage it are attending college in ever larger numbers--the ratio is roughly 55/45 to 60/40, with women in the majority. The ratio used to be reversed, and was much more extreme, with relatively few women attending college. Are women driving out the men, or are men opting out on their own? Most men are, I think, opting out, and some feel like education has become a women's enterprise. It's a big mistake for men to devalue their own education, of course, but some think they get an early start in business of some sort and beat the curve. A few might, most will not.
The effect of many more women in the work place, as supervisors and professional co-workers, isn't always an agreeable experience for men. Women are socialized differently then men, and largely male environments work differently than largely female environments do.
So, make a long story short, in certain circumstances there is fairly regular conflict, and I don't find a lot of women's complaints--as grievances unique to women--justified.
None of this has all that much to do with "feminism" per se -- it has more to do with economic and social changes which are only somewhat related to feminism with respect to employment equality.
I'm fond of https://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Politics-Kate-Millett/dp/0252068890 because its theory of patriarchy is very clearly stated and makes a good deal of sense of many aspects of patriarchy, but there's a huge selection of readings out there on women's studies. The best way to understand it is to just dive into the theory, history, and so forth. Then you'll have a better view of what isn't quite amenable to easy to think about and clearly stated theses :)
Makes me wonder what the Feminist definition of "Pat Robertson" woud be?
Meow!
GREG
Additionally, it's striking imo how these radfems are so vocal about the woman's right to choose or the woman's liberty and yet oftentimes act quite paternalistic themselves. Ideas such as "all sex is rape" is justified by appeals to the Patriarchy, as well as claims that women "don't know what's best for them" - as if a woman can't think for herself despite the apparent influence of the Patriarchy. Is it still oppressive if the woman enjoys it? If so, then this becomes an aesthetic argument and not an ethical one.
I'd half-agree. Where I would disagree is in your use of the word "nothing more" That some people indulge in a sort of status game is undeniable. That it is "nothing more than" a game of status is easily refutable, though, at least insofar that real political gains, such as the passage of legislation or changing of policies in the workplace or changing the role of a particular class of people within society at large, count as something other than the game for social status. I would say that any of those three categories would be real political gains, and are very different from simply trying to put oneself on some kind of pecking order within a group -- those sorts of gains make differences for everyone within the class, even if they don't participate.
Can't help but think you're on to something.
There were, and are, examples of discrimination.
However, the heavily intellectualizing, reality-removed feminist philosophy you sometimes see these days, seems a world apart from issues that some face daily.
Who cares about all that abstract arguing, when there are real-life problems to do away with?
It's instead become an intellectual sport, sort of a new, ideational, detached battle of wits, using fancy words, ready to get picked up by edgelords.
(I've encountered such real-life discrimination personally, by the way.)
Quoting Pneumenon
Reading this, I'm surprised you weren't more open to what I was getting at in Sophistry: The Obscene Father. I don't know how to quantify the game you mention, but the structure of this game is fascinating. And perhaps you'll agree that it seeps into philosophy and into your very description of the game. Indicating awareness of the game is a move in the game. This gesture too.
Some want you to call yourself a feminist because feminism is simply the desire for gender equality under the law (this is also egalitarianism by definition)... Standard stuff...
Other feminists want you to declare yourself a feminist because certain gender inequalities persist across the globe and or at home in the west and it is only by focusing on the problems of the people who are most affected by inherent imbalances in societal systems that we may begin to correct the currently existent and pervasive gender inequalities which afflict us.
Still more feminists will tell you that by definition you cannot be a feminist, because as a man and have been raised in a system where because of your privileged gender you have been ingrained in, benefited from, and contributed to the ongoing and systematic oppression of women. You can be an "ally" of the feminist movement, and as such you must constantly ask yourself whether or not you are in a position of privilege which might deprive a woman of that same opportunity. At feminist rallies this means marching at the back of the crowd, or at least not at the front; it means not occupying a speaking role at feminist events (and other events in larger society) when instead a woman could be given that opportunity.
Generally the new wave of feminists that the OP encountered wants all men to confront their inherent sexism and accept that the west is currently a patriarchal system of oppression. Their main issues are bringing to attention the earnings disparity between men and women in an effort to see the disparity eliminated, pointing out sexism and sexist micro-aggressions in every-day life and culture (see: sex in in media (see: "sex-negative feminism") and sexism in video games by Feminist Frequency), and pointing out that the western culture is "rape culture".
-------
Some of this may seem like an unfair portrayal of this new wave of feminism but if anyone is interested, I will endure the cringe-worthy task of providing direct links to the source. There are actual ideological origins for this stuff, and by that I mean books containing (re)definitions of terms which paint entire narratives of the west and are being taught in western universities... And these narratives are, shall we say, somewhat less than charitable...
A part of the confusion comes with redefining sexism itself to mean"privilege plus power", which essentially means that since women have no power, while they can certainly hold prejudices towards males, since their actions would amount to nothing they therefore cannot carry out meaningful acts of sexism. This position is uncomfortably commonly wielded in what might appear to be an otherwise academic approach to understanding social dynamics. Not all feminists will assent to this position (there has long been discord between feminists regarding the specifics of their theories), and this kind of controversially worded position is a main contributor to why many if not most people, including women, would currently prefer to distance themselves from the label of "feminist" altogether.
These ideas are not so new though, and without needing to get into a history of feminism, suffice it to say it has been growing in popularity since the 90's. The source of the contemporary phenomenon that drove the OP to write his post is a combination of the ideological positions described above (and more) with easily accessible mass media and social networking platforms which inevitably condense and simplify their messages. These new online social networks also seem to magnify whatever is the most emotionally evocative with emergent trends that can gain very quick and wide-spread support. What we're then left with is a visible and vocal minority of individuals, with a very generous and passionate following, espousing very condemning views of the state of sexism in the west; they want you to agree with everything they say, and if you disagree and they get offended, it might be pointed out that disagreement in and of itself is an example of sexism.
Having considered myself a feminist for quite a long time I first got interested in this new cultural phenomenon (a new wave of full blown PC'ness) because I kept hearing and seeing things which rather disturbed me. Whenever (albeit rarely) I speak to feminists who focus on the problems that western women face (mainly an overall earnings gap, and "rape culture"), instead of deconstructing the truth of these claims I like to instead bring up the issues which I, as a feminist, am presently focused on. FGM (female genital mutilation) is currently very widespread in Africa, with some countries such as Somalia having a rate of 98%. UNICEF estimates Egypt at 91% and Guinea at 96% as of 2013. In some countries, not only is sexism systemic or systematic, actual rape is carried out systematically. Forced marriage, human trafficking, and various other forms of modern slavery are just a few of the other problems that are widespread in many countries across the globe and which afflict women the most often. Even if I did believe that in the west we have a patriarchal society which systemically oppresses women through vehicles like paying female workers lower rates for the same work and rape culture, I would sooner invest my money and time as a feminist toward initiatives focused on countries which see much more severe magnitudes and intensities of these problems. I would inform them that I am entirely unconcerned with their feelings of being offended at my lack of concern for their discontent, and that they should get over whichever gendered micro-aggression I might have happened to commit against them, it being my ingrained and inherent nature after-all.
Even with this text wall I've only began to lightly brush the surface of this topic. I find it fascinating.
If anyone is interested in looking deeper into the specifics of the ideologies these "SJW's" are wielding, look up: "Inter-sectional feminism and Identity politics". Kimberly Crenshaw is a notable proponent of these ideas, having coined the term "intersectionality" as a part of her feminist theory.
This sort of feminism is so nakedly sexist that it cries out for satire if not condemnation. I'm embarrassed for the men who show up under such conditions. We have here, it seems to me, the idea of a "gendered" idea. It's an attack on gender privilege that assumes gender privilege as its MO. It's just like women being ask to cover their heads in church not so long ago, for another arguably gendered idea. Thankfully this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Or I just know cool women who treat the men in their lives as they expect to be and are treated: with kindness, as equals. A**holes come with both kinds (or all kinds) of genitals just around the taint, of course.
Only if you aren't thinking about context. Such polices are in place to prevent women's voices from being overwhelmed, particularly by men saying horrible stuff when they try to talk about women's issues-- I don't have to go far to find it. This thread has multiple examples. What would the feminist march look like if those men were leading it, saying that a whole host of the issues which affect women didn't really matter?
For sure it's gendered, but that's the point: to avoid instances where women's voices are overwhelmed by men who think they know what's best for them.
While I don't quite agree with men not being classed as feminists, the argument alludes to something important about our motivations. Why is it so important, for example, for men to be at the front of the march? If the women are up their advocating for their rights, why does the man have to be lauded as a feminist hero? Is not enough to have women speak it?
We, if you are counting me (as I have a body which is AMAB), frequently have a selfish interests in these contexts. Our reason for complaining in this context frequently has more to do with our voices not being considered the authority than anything else. Part of giving-up privilege is not holding that we are the authority and that our opinions are needed everywhere. Why give the floor to women to advocate about their issues? I mean are we only supportive of feminism to get the cookie for when we lead the march?
The men in the "ally" group are far from embarrassing. They are secure enough in themselves to let women have authority in this context. If the women say they want to speak about something, they let them, without getting angry that they aren't the voice or authority of the moment.
This.
Radfems and co. often berate the Men's Rights movement, and the Men's Rights movement often berates the Radfems and co. It's an endless series of fear-mongering and strawmen.
You see the same thing from women, though. It's apparently wrong for men to tell women what is best for them, but it's totally okay for women to tell other women what is best for them. As if there is a strict metaphysical divide between men and women, and personal liberty is thrown out.
A woman prostituting herself is shamed by many feminists, and used as an example of the Patriarchy's influence. But is the woman actually being oppressed here, or is that just an aesthetic of the feminist ideology? What if the woman doesn't mind prostituting herself, or actually, god-forbid, enjoy it? Should other people be able to tell her what it best for her, or tell her that she doesn't know what is best for her because of something-something the influence of the Patriarchy?
First, I respect your position and appreciate your directness and politeness.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I can understand the desirability of female leadership. But I can't get behind "men cannot be feminists" at all. I think one can derive a strong and appealing feminism from individualism alone.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I shouldn't be too hard on these guys. I like the sensible feminism that permeates the people I'd call "cool." I'd call myself a liberal with a sense of humor. I'm pro-woman, pro-gay, pro-trans, and yet I don't do more than vote in that direction and treat everyone kind with kindness. But I wouldn't show up to support bitter, divisive voices. Rolling Stone published that false story abut gang rape. There's a morbid desire for outrage that is counterproductive. As "rape" is smeared around carelessly, I am less eager to take accusations at face value. There are some man-hating crazies out there. They are not my friends. For the same reason that woman-hating crazies aren't my friends. It's the same crazy I object to in both cases. It's the "Alex Jones" spirit. There's a dark "second religiousness" among lots of liberals. The words "racist" and "sexist" are used without precision or empathy in a way that reminds me of crude religion. From this perspective, the world is run by the devil (the old rich heterosexual white man) and those not with me 100 percent are necessarily "sinful" (racist and/or sexist and/or X-phobic).
Finally, solidarity movements are two-edged. If I am a woman, do I have a duty to all women? To women as a concept? Must a black man fight for the abstraction of all black men? This is the subordination of the individual in terms of gender or race. I do not feel a duty toward whiteness or maleness generally speaking. It's only when I'm attacked in such terms (indirectly, as the gender or race is attacked) that I slip into solidarity thinking. I understand the temptation, but isn't the point to get beyond such ultimately anti-individual identifications?
Exactly. I see the same spirit on both sides. In my view the individual does well to transcend the temptation of this morbid solidarity. "Fear is the mind-killer."
Most women actually do not call themselves feminists, and of the minority of women who do consider themselves feminist, many wholeheartedly reject reject the idea that men cannot be feminist or are inherently sexist.
This vocal minority subscribes to the notion that "micro-aggression" constitutes a vast part of how and why west is fundamentally patriarchal (micro aggressions constantly devalue and oppress women). When this idea is combined with a subscription to "identity politics", which states that the experiences of the oppressed are much more valid than the experiences of the privileged, something scary then tends to happen...
If I say something that in any way criticizes these particular feminists, as a white male, they tend to question the validity of what I'm saying on the basis of my privileged male gender. If they disagree with my position, then to them, I become the embodiment of what they despise: "A male oppressor using his invalid ideas to suppress the more valid ideas of women and thereby perpetuate the unfair privilege that as a male I constantly benefit from". Once this argument is levied emotions quickly run wild and the previous discussion is made inaccessible. Instead if I wish to continue the discussion I somehow need to begin by convincing them that I'm not actually sexist, and that my ideas might have merit all on their own regardless of my gendered experiences.
This is why safe spaces exist. This is why these feminists think they ought not to risk letting a man have a voice within or in regards to their movement. This is why we have so many examples of (mostly young/university students) immortalizing themselves in the forms of internet memes where they freak out over the smallest possible real or perceived social slight and collapse into the most cringe-worthy outrage fueled tirades imaginable.
Thankfully these kinds of people are a minority, but unfortunately they are the loudest and they are very very angry at times. Here's the most recent example of this phenomenon which has gone viral:
Micro-aggressions remind me of sprites and goblins. Sure, they are sort of there, but, yeah, it's perfect for a conspiratorial outlook on the world. I wouldn't say that the world can't be improved, but I don't trust the radically outraged to accomplish much. In fact, I suspect they take a dark pleasure in this outrage and depend on the situation that installs them in their heroic role.
On the button. I add that the frequent appeals to "subconscious" biases and behaviors is rather convenient, rhetorically speaking.
The example provided in the video seems fairly far from ideology and much closer to someone who is in need of a sedative. Winding oneself up that way is either playing a "game of uproar" or it is uncontrolled anger. In either case, it was clinically interesting.
Keep in mind that the woman who went on arguably a hysterical tirade in the video recorded it herself, and then uploaded, herself, to the internet thinking that her video evidence of sexual harassment would completely vindicate her.
Here is the message that she posted along with the video:
[hide="Reveal"]Quoting Zarna Joshi[/hide]
Here is a video of a talk given by the producer of the video which contains a great deal of insight into her particular world views and their emotional gravitas (If there is yet still doubt): (watching the first 10-20 minutes alone gives a good sense of her ideological leanings)
You're quite right that the original video does not contain a humongous amount of this persons ideology, *snicker*, but I do feel it is quite a good example of the emotional and rhetorical effects of these ideologies. When I first saw this video I instantly recognized it as the product of "identity politics". She identifies "Hugh" early on as "a person of color" as a part of her criticism that his opinions on the "bunker" (some sort of local police thing) are unwarranted, harmful, or otherwise unjustified/objectionable. This makes sense to her because she presumes that all people of color ought to have the same political opinions given that they are all victims of colonial oppression. It's not only that he disagrees with her that infuriated her so, it's also due to the fact that he IS a person of color and therefore per her theory has a valid opinion, and frankly, cannot be easily discounted as a racist.
Quoting her paraphrasing her 'guru' from the Colonization and Animals video, beginning at 3:30: ""Just so you know my guru always told me, that if you are ever speaking anywhere you should always let your audience know who you are, so that they know why you even have a right to speak on this subject. It is important you as my audience have a right to demand my credentials".
The kind of credentials she is referring to is however not the traditional kind of "credentials" that we might imagine. Here are the credentials she provides beginning at 3:58 : "I was born in England. My family is from India. And I have been a traveler in this land, shall we say, for many years. So I have experienced the racism, the colonization, the patriarchy, and the capitalism of three continents. I've felt it deeply, I've experienced it; It is in my racial memory. And this is not a superficial surface movement for me. This goes deep into my soul, and it comes from that place, because this is a spiritual movement.".
This is one of the starkest examples of identity politics being employed that I've ever seen...
The speed with which these new feminist and other progressive schools of thought are emerging, spreading and evolving makes them difficult to track and overall appraisal of the movements is made difficult by the fact that the shape of it's network is broad, diverse, and with diverse and inconsistent interconnections.
There is also a wave of reactionary pundits which are emerging in response to the greater social justice movement that is occurring (largely thanks to new online social media networks), and where the "Social Justice Movement" goes too far, they seem to be there to lampoon and ridicule. The bulk of these anti-"SJW" reactionaries actually consider themselves to be a part of the progressive left. They refer to "SJW's" as "Regressives", and while they too have their overblown extremists, many of their criticisms are much more digestible to the public than the positions of those whom they label to be "regressive".
There is also a kind of media bias to consider. Campaigning in the name of eliminating social inequality is a very marketable and advertiser friendly thing. But trying to make the argument that a specific given campaign for social equality has fundamentally flawed positions is by nature negative; critical, sensitive, controversial, offensive. A gay conservative provocateur became the only person to ever have been "unverified" by Twitter, and then the only person to ever have been "banned forever" (I suspect not just because of his provocative views, but because of the way he flaunted his flamboyantly gay identity knowing that this presented a bit of a challenge to those using the lens of identity politics and intersectional feminism). At the same time, a feminist producing Youtube videos on sexist micro-aggressions in video games is able to make it onto popular talk shows and even all the way to the UN to point out that online harassment and micro-sexism in everyday life is a major problem facing western women. Not a lot of the "social justice gone wild" crowd are very marketable, but almost none of the "anti social-justice" crowd is marketable at all from the perspective of large corporations, advertisers and media operators. It is for this reason that the clash between the "SJW's" and the "anti-regressives" is going somewhat under he radar with most of it being filtered out of the mainstream, but more and more the so named "regressive left" is making it into mainstream media outlets. The nature of online social networks are such that generally they are compartmentalized in that unless you get into specific circles you might be entirely unaware of them (given how many there are) which is somewhat different from traditional media which has much less biased outreach.
In short it's all a big clusterfuck right now. The "regressive left" get's play on national media, which pours gasoline on the "anti-regressive" fire, which then ridicules the "regressive left" via social networks, which pours gasoline on the "regressive left" fire, which gets them more attention from the mainstream media, and thus the flame war self-propagates. It's really quite fascinating but unfortunately it is also quite a tedious subject. I wish I could say that I think these controversies will decline in intensity, but since the main ingredient which has seen to it's rise is only growing (social media), I think it is likely that more and more people are going to start being drawn into the specifics of this discussion and the ensuing ideological flame wars.
But instead of working practically with changing legislation, educating the population, funding safe houses for persecuted women, etc. many "feminists" seem to believe that speaking seditiously among themselves at conferences or in feminist publications would matter somehow.
This is arguably the result of the influence of bad philosophy (e.g. Foucault and other formerly fashionable postmodern thinkers).
From my perspective, what is universally true is that whoever happens to have superior power tends to expand at the expense of those with inferior power. Europe colonized so much of the world because it had superior power derived from superior technology (per J. Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel). It is also universally true that the recipients of colonization do not like it--no reason why they should. When they can, they revolt.
Homo sapiens behave this way. It's what we do. It's who we are. There isn't an acre of land worth having anywhere that somebody else hasn't tried to take it away from the previous occupants. This is true everywhere: in Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. People accumulate, and those who are the most successful accumulators, as a rule, do not give very much away to less successful accumulators. Zama Joshi can look to her ancestral homeland (India) for vivid examples of this.
Identity politics focuses intensely on the specific over the general, which can (but doesn't have to) set the stage for an experience of continuous multi-point oppression. At any moment, in any location some specific aspect of an identity group is being oppressed, discriminated against, abused, disrespected, discounted, and so on. The narrow focus does not allow for a wider perspective (like, maybe at a particular moment nothing untoward was happening).
The longer, wider view doesn't miss the fact of maintained structural disadvantages and exploitation, but it allows one to also view the progress that has been made in reducing disadvantages and exploitation. The wider view makes it a bit easier to maintain emotional equanimity, which is damned useful in "the struggle".
Here are just a few paraphrases and quotations beginning from the 30 minute mark and on for those who are unable or unwilling to view the lengthy source video:
[hide="Reveal"]"And whenever white colonizers co-opt an indigenous ideas they always turn it into something capitalistic and ugly. Always" 30:40
Colonizers pretend like progressivism and animal rights is "white culture" 31:59
National parks were created as hunting playgrounds for rich white men (i.e, why the Sierra Club was formed) by forcing indigenous people off their land, and while Zarna Joshi's group "Women of Color Speak Out" accepts money themselves from groups like the Sierra Club, who accept money from natural gas companies while simultaneously lobbying for the public to convert to more natural glass because it's cleaner, this does not mean that the important and uncomfortable truth that national parks were created as hunting playgrounds for rich white men is not the truth that needs to be spoken in order to understand the effects of colonialism and white supremacy. 32:25
The Sierra Club and Environmentalist, conservationist movements, and the traditional animal rights movement is a destructive co-op-tation of indigenous wisdom. 33:46
"Mainstream NGO's, the mainstream environmentalist movement IS the fossil fuel empire. We are not going to win through them. The revolution will not be funded, understand this deeply; the revolution will not be funded. And it will not be televised either. It will not be broadcast because the white supremacist system doesn't want you to see it." 36:16
"the colonizers co-opted vegetarianism; they co-opted the plant based movement and said "this is our movement, this is our identity, shut the hell up brown people, black people, what the hell right do you have to talk about this? This was our idea...". " 36:55
Pythagoras co-opted the vegetarianism of Indian merchants, that vegetarianism is good because reincarnation implies hurting animals will also one day hurt ourselves, and Pythagoras also stole his theorem from Indians. 37:40
"the white people" co-opted "shakahari" (Indian word for plant eater) and called it "veganism", as if it's theirs and was their idea... 39:00
"The colonizers created climate change and it is the brown and black people who were colonized who are going to pay for it" 39:51
It is white supremacy, it is eurocentricism, it is racism, it is imperialism. Climate change is white supremacy; climate change is racism. And if you do not understand that the racial justice movement IS the environmental movement, you do not understand what is really happening. So what do we need to do? We need to decolonize our minds, and our hearts, and our souls. Decolonize yourself and those around you; help the people around to decolonize. Talk to your friends and your family and your children and your workplace and your college and your school and your bus stop. And don't do it in an "I'm vegan and you should be vegan too" oppressive, white supremist manner; don't to that. Whenever white people co-opt indigenous ideas they always make it look bad. DON'T DO THAT! Don't be morally superior. It is not about being morally superior, it is about getting in touch with your soul. It is about understanding, and those mountain gorillas are your brothers and sisters. It is about understanding that ALL land is indigenous land. All land is indigenous land. If you're white, You were indigenous to a place too once, before it was beaten out of you by capitalism and patriarchy." 40:46
If you are white, use your white privilege to dismantle the system of colonialism, use your white privilege to dismantle the system of white supremacy and racism, use your white privilege to dismantle the system of capitalism. Use your white privilege to dismantle the system of patriarchy that says "I'm a man and I have a right to do whatever I want to your body". We treat this earth exactly the same way, men and in particular, white male patriarchy, treats women, and people of color; that's how we treat this earth." 43:27[/hide]
The question section and answers portion was really not very noteworthy at all. It consisted of nothing but ideological and rhetorical correction and self-correction (from all sides) aside from the poem which was read, whose reading was itself corrected. The first main takeaway from the overall Q&A are that white people need to talk to (or "process at/with") other white people about racism and patriarchy, not people of color, mainly because to do so inflicts suffering of some kind, and also that there is no conflict of interest whatsoever given that "Women of Color Speak out" is a group sponsored by the same corporations they are criticizing.
From the start of the Q&A:
"I'm going to enforce a "progressive stack". that means that those who are from marginalized communities get to speak first. And I'm also going to give certain rules of engagement, so, one is progressive stack, the other is when you're processing all of the things that you've heard from me, from "Ahh", from so many of the amazing speakers that you've heard from today, please, if you are a white person, please do not process AT A PERSON OF COLOR! PLEASE DON'T DO THAT. They don't need to hear it. Because these things you may have been hearing maybe for the first time today, or maybe you heard it in a way that you have not heard it before, and that's wonderful and I'm glad that you're processing it, but you're hearing it today and they have been living it for their entire lives, so please don't do that." 45:25
The overall talk seeks to explore colonialism, climate change, and it's impact on animals, but it is constantly derailed with politicized positions regarding tangential issues, and constantly invokes race as a necessary measure to even begin to understand issues like climate change, let alone things like "veganism/vegetarianism" and animal rights. Too often it appeals to historical events to put down the very idea of whiteness, and uses race as a basis for genuine discrimination over the course of her talk and advocates for such within the very content of her talk. "Colonialism" becomes anything and everything "white" by the end of it, and if the whole of it is accepted, I see no other way to come away from this other than with the idea and feeling that as a white male, I'm a guilty patriarchal oppressor who has nothing but stolen culture and ideas. If rage is the rational response to these things, should I then project this rage at myself?
I was going to ask: where do they find the time? But I spend lots of my free time here. So it's really a question of morbidity/resentment. Some of us (maybe not self-consciously) associate virtue with righteous indignation. Others have come to question righteous indignation as a mask for something questionable. Don't get me wrong. I think there is some genuine or respectable indignation out there. But I do see some sort of doomed, "infinite" desire out there, too.
The world will always be imperfect for those who identify with the role of the accuser and/or the victim. I remember the allure of these roles in my 20s. I felt like I significantly evolved when I started to question them as basic investments. Someone should (yes, selfishly) assert their "right" to have a good time down here, or what's the damned point? "Infinite" conscience looks anti-life. Life is exploitation. We are at the very least twisting plant proteins into human proteins. Of course, be nice, at least to the other nice humans. But the desire for purity looks doomed. If we are lucky, we act decently. But to wash one's heart/mind completely of "sin" or the various x-isms? Here's a theory: the victim role is a refuge from guilt caused by the "infinite" conscience. Yes, there are victims and that sucks, at least to the conscious nice guy if not to the news-as-entertainment-consuming horror-monger, but there is also a somewhat optional identification with the victim as hero that I'm getting at.
No. You should not. It's not healthy for privileged males to feel as bad as relatively privileged feminists would have us feel. That advice, of course, is coming from an unrepentant W.A.S.P. male,
Not feeling guilty is a privilege, and since I'm privileged... I choose to not feel guilty. I don't feel guilty about the sun never setting on the British Empire. I don't feel guilty about manifest destiny, either, or the genocide of Native Americans. I don't feel guilty about the Holocaust. Guilt is the appropriate response for wrongful acts that one has committed. There are certainly many strong responses appropriate for all the wrongs of history, but guilt isn't one of them. Rage against the crimes of the past seems a bit beside the point, too.
I would not claim that everyone is a potential murderer (though there is some evidence that just about anybody might commit murder under the right circumstances) but I do insist that there is no group of like-minded people on earth who are incapable of launching atrocities against their enemies, their neighbors, and anyone who gets in the way. Were feminists to actually form a matriarchal state, they would be as prone to commit all the crimes of a patriarchal state, given the same amount of time in which to perform them--their high-minded rhetoric notwithstanding.
This isn't a reason to celebrate or gloat. It's just that there is no Promised Land of milk and honey. No matter where we go, there we are -- and we are a problem we have not come close to solving.
Identity is descriptive rather than prescriptive for the intersectionalist. Climate change, for example, is a racial issue because it's going to impact on different racial and enthic groups in different ways. Many parts of the world do not have the technology or capacity respond to the effects of climate change.
In the West, we have the wealth and technology to relocate many people pretty smoothly, if climate change render a particular area uninhabitable. Not true of many other parts of the world and the people who live there. Identity is a part of appraising the world and society because each person has an identity. No-one is the faceless everyman of classical liberalism.
We are white, black, gay, trans, philosophers, etc., etc. Circumstances which affect an individual constitute a life of somone within an identity.
"Guilt" within intersectionalist philosophy isn't the traditional kind. It's not about personal wrongs you have committed (though one may have done so). Rather, it is about describing how people of different idenities are affected within society. It's a call not to just dismiss how society understand and treats people of identity as irrelevant.
Headline in the New York Times: WORLD WILL END TOMORROW. WOMEN AND MINORITIES TO BE DISPROPORTIONATELY AFFECTED.
I don't think anybody has the resources to respond adequately or smoothly to the unpleasant challenges of global warming.
Just consider the cost of the intensified storms, flooding, droughts, and forest fires the US has experienced so far: In the last 6 years climate change has cost just the US around $150 billion. Two hail storms in Texas in March and April, 2016, lasting just a couple of hours each, cost $5.6 billion. How could that be? A lot of very large hail (up to 4.5 inches in diameter) and high winds struck the heavily populated area of Dallas - Fort Worth - Plano, TX. (Information from NOAA).
Granted, these are manageable in a multi-trillion dollar economy. But Hurricane Sandy cost $60 billion alone, and that damage is still being repaired. There are a lot of heavily populated flood-prone cities. A good share of Boston, for instance, was built on filled-in ocean-side marshes. New York took an unexpected beating from Sandy's flooding. So would Washington DC and other cities. Then there are the gulf-coast cities... New Orleans, for instance.
The US does not have the resources to smoothly relocate 20 million people from east and southern coastal regions, cope with a year round forest fire threat, periodic severe flooding anywhere a heavy, slow-moving rain front stalls, drought, tornados, hurricanes, forest fires heat waves, and other threats (insects, disease...) as the effects of global warming intensify. Let's hope the San Andreas Fault doesn't finally let loose the Big One.
So, Bangladesh is in far worse shape. There many millions of people live just a little ways above the average high-water mark, which keeps rising. They do not have the resources -- or the territory -- to move everyone into higher and dryer land. Where are these 30 million people going to go? India? Burma? Australia? China? California? Scotland? Uzbekistan?
I don't think it's a manageable problem. Global warming does and will disturb all plant, animal, and human ecologies and we probably will not be able to cope--which means the crises will not be met with adequate and graciously humane responses.
"We" didn't do "global warming" to "them". No one even suspected that there would be a long-term consequence to burning all the fossil fuel we could get our hands on until fairly recently--and already it was too late. The countries that burned a lot of coal and oil did so because it was there, and it was readily accessible, reasonably cheap, and it unleashed tremendous energy which we put to good use (more or less).
Global warming is a global disaster, a human catastrophe.
Rejecting the ideal of the faceless everyman as an ideal looks like regress to me. If there is some "essence" in race or gender, then the racists and sexists are right. If you're only talking about personal histories informing one's worldview, then of course that's true. But don't we strive toward a sort of universality, away from our varied histories? If the transcendence of race/gender/sexuality in some kind of humanism isn't the goal, then what is? It seems like a historical accident that whites did so much colonizing. Or is there a "white essence" that is capitalistic and imperialistic and hates Gaia? Reading some quotes from that lecture, it's hard not to see some magical, utopian thinking.
This is what I was talking about in my last post, about how the social justice movement is just about increasing one's status. Expounding the virtuous nature of feminist men looks like another attempt to garner status when it comes from a feminist.
But regarding "virtue". The anti-"regressive" crowd has popularized what almost amounts to a new kind of informal fallacy they call "virtue signaling". Virtue signaling is essentially whenever someone says or does something that is designed to give spectators the impression that the individual is very virtuous (and therefore has a more valid position), but does not necessarily address any specifics or content beyond the nature of their own virtue. It's very much a fallacious appeal to "virtuous character", but what makes it different from a regular appeal to character is that the "virtue" is applied to the individual themselves rather than being applied to any specific argument.
By applying "virtue" to one's own identity within identity politics, the audience will ascribe more inherent validity to the "experiences" of someone with virtue. For white males in the movement this is an especially important reality because without appealing to their own virtue, they have no way to justify standing shoulder to shoulder (in solidarity, or in debate) with those of oppressed identities. That is of course, if they can even make it through the progressive stack in the first place.
I try my best to ignore "virtue signaling" whenever I see it because you don't need to address it in order to win an argument unless the argument is whether or not the person is virtuous.. That said, with the particular (minority) brand of feminist we've been describing, it is important to understand it as an inherent feature of their rhetoric which stems from their focus on "identity" as a source of valid opinions. Virtue signaling is a defense to the standard intersectional feminist position which vilifies and denigrates non-victim classes by blaming them for all problems and further goes on to exclude their ideas on the basis that their identity invalidates them. It's pretty much necessary to do if you want to participate in their discussions as a white male.
Indeed, that's the point. Status is not, as you are imagining, something irrelevant to the question of social justice. You are treating like it's just postering over whether someone is a favourite. (that does happen sometimes, often to the detriment of talking about the status which matters-- see squabbling over who is a "true feminist" ).
Status is the key concern. All feminists have been concerned with it. The point if the movement is no give women more status: legal rights, education rights, working rights, reproductive rights, a voice over their own lives, to be respected as an authority in some relevant situations, etc., etc.
Praising the men who understand and respect feminist arguments is about status. It's to point out that, contrary to what the classic liberal masses will assert, that these men are not embarrassing cowards for allowing women to be the authortive voice on feminist issues.
The fact the classical liberal reads status as an irrelevant concern is an indictment on their philosophy. If the social concern is the rights, valuing and authority of individual, how can arguments about status be considered irrelevant? It's what we are supposed to be concerned about. The point has always been to increase the status of indivduals who belong to various groups in society.
[quote=]Praising the men who understand and respect feminist arguments is about status[/quote]
And if you happen to be one of them, there's a nice status bump in it... For you.
If the door price is undergoing a lot of irrelevant posturing, then maybe the people in question are not worth speaking with.
Status is always largely going to be earned. I think liberals value the rights/liberties of the individual. But what is this authority? Over whom? We can earn positions in economic/artistic hierarchies by winning the respect and admiration of other free individuals.
There will never be equality of individuals. Some are born smart, beautiful, healthy, etc. Others are not. Some use their freedom to become smarter, more beautiful, more healthy. Others do not. No one can fix that, unless we get Brave New World and create the Model T human to salve covetousness. We'd also need a direct democracy of clones, I suppose, but even in this outlandish fantasy the slightly differing environment would produce superiority. And these superior clones would seek one another out as worthy of friendship, partnership, marriage. They would paint stars on their bellies. (The Sneetches) Life is preference in action. The brain is like an evaluation machine.
We can piously fake an equal regard toward everyone that we do not have, but this implicitly confesses a preference for and the superiority of just that sort of pious person. And it's ridiculous. Who doesn't see the "damned" hanging around the city, broken in spirit
What we can do is strive toward equality before the law as well as economic conditions that allow even the poorest a chance to develop their potential and live like human beings in the meantime. IMV, one of the keys to maturity is to overcome the victim myth and the fantasy that one's past is crippling. Even if one's past was more crippling than usual, ignoring this is perhaps a good strategy.
I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to talk to racists and sexists who at least admitted their racism and sexism. What's creepy about this group is that they are one with their enemy, completely obliviously. The height of ignorance is perhaps belief in one's innocence and in the perfect guilt on one's enemy. As someone wrote somewhere, look for methodical cruelty in those who think they are doing the Lord's work. Some newfangled Inquisition comes to mind. 1984. But they create an equally rabid opposition by their extremeness, so maybe the world won't go mad, after all.
I use "masses" as a descriptive of the many, not as a reference to the lower classes. Many of the "classical liberals masses" are so called "elites." Some of them are even amongst social justice communities of the Left.
There is a status bump for the group in question. The response to this is telling. For women to have a status bump, is considered the most horrific or irrelevant outcome.
What exactly is wrong with women having a nice status bump? Is there problem with their voices being considered authortive on issues which affect them? Are we meant to trust arguments like VagabondSpectre has made in this thread, which rejects these issues have any relevance?
One of key points here is it is not always about you. Sometimes the status of someone else is more important than yours. In some contexts, others are aware of more than you. One does not automatically have the status of being a relevant authority.
With respect to radical and intersectional feminism, this is a major issue for many men. They cannot accept they are not the relevant authority. The reality of giving status to women terrifies them. To have what they think is important on hold for a moment is totally unacceptable. Those women are merely speaking irrealvance which has nothing to do what really matters.
That's the classical liberal myth. A just society is, supposedly, found in when everyone is entirely equivalent: the "free everyman" without a face. The utopian vision where people transcend difference to live in a world where status irrelevant.
Intersectionalist philosophy might have the appearance of utopian thinking in some cases, but it's direction of thought is the opposite. The story of solution is frequently rejected. There is oppression in many instances which cannot be resolved. Nothing can undo, for example, the horrors of colonialism on various indigenous people around the world. In the the modern world, the differences between individuals put the "equality" envision by classical liberalism beyond us-- to be the faceless everyman would be to destroy us as an individual. We couldn't be anyone. We would have no status at all.
"Equality" is not the concern of the intersectionalist. A number of them might speak of "equality" in terms rhetorical posturing, as in our society it has come to mean "just social organisation," but it's not an ideas of what society ought to look like. Justice is what is important to them. Not a status of fiction, but status in practice. In some cases "equality" can function (e.g. most laws, economic means), but in other situations status means being something other people are not-- a woman being trusted on the way society treats her over the men who disagree, the women with the right over men to choose when her pregnancy is terminated, etc., etc.
The intersectionalist's destruction of utopian thinking is what brings them most into conflict with classical liberals. Classical liberalism "equal regard" for the value and speech of everyone is revealed to be a pious fake. The group of men sits there (e.g. many in this thread) saying: "Everyone is entitled to have their voice heard. All opinions are equal and relevant," while dismissing the woman's voice about her place in society has any relevance.
The classical liberal doesn't see. (particularly evident in responses to description of black oppression in the US. The way the social system discriminates against the black community, whether justly or not,
is considered irrelevant because it's just the "equal" law being applied).
They ignore them to hold everyone is free and equal. Their utopian vision protects itself. Society becomes a question of aiming to eliminate difference rather than to respect the ones which are there as much as possible. Question of social justice get reduced to things which can be made equal (e.g. laws money), as if that were the extent of improvement which was possible. Descriptions which identify failings and actions to make improvements, not to "perfection" but to "better," in some areas are dismissed.
The intersectionalist doesn't have a victim myth. Oppression is descriptive, not causal. Any crippling is a feature of the present (i.e. how the world exists now), not a necessary outcome of what has been done to someone in the past. People should ignore their oppressive past with respect to making their future. It doesn't define their future. The only limit is present situation.
Indeed, it's for this reason that "overcoming" description of past oppression has no relevance in maturity. To say: "X oppressed me in the past" enforces no limit on one's future. It only describes what happens in the past. Intersectionality certainly has "victims" in the sense that it describes many people as oppressed in the present. Sometimes it even has "victims" in the sense of demanding repatriations. Neither of these a limits on anyone's ability to get out of oppression. The former is just describing something which is occurring, the latter is a recompense for injustice.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
No. I believe I stressed that status variation or hierarchy will always be with us. My vision is hardly utopian. To the degree that I take politics seriously (considering that it's most just fashion, unless one has billions to spend on elections), I'd like gender and skin-color and sexual preference to not be problems for folks. Maybe it'll get better, but we'll probably never escape it altogether. If we leave this planet at some point and meet other intelligent species, that might do the trick. But as a rule we seek out-groups to project our shadow on. For instance, the "colonizer" is an easy shadow projection of a speaker who has a sort of colonial condescension toward the sacred victim. Look to the person who dominates the space with her voice. Politicians and moralizers almost never admit to wanting attention and power. Their motives are altruism and justice, pure and simple, right?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Beyond equal laws equally enforced and some kind of economic safety net (also equally distributed), it's hard to imagine what you have in mind if not institutional racism or sexism, etc., justified in terms of a 'benevolent' ideology that others correctly perceive as a threat. Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I agree. But is this really the message that's being communicated? We see demands for trigger warnings, etc. Having-been-victimized is currency. I can imagine a person unhappy that nothing sufficiently terrible has happened to them yet. "Well, X was raped and Y survived incest, but I'm just a little square white girl..."
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I sort of agree and sort of don't. Oppression that doesn't affect one's future shape is hardly worth mentioning. But, yeah, we can work out the kinks in our soul by acknowledging that the harm done to us wasn't deserved. It was the bite of a dog, human nature, reality. Justice is something we try to carve into this chaos, and our flickering images of it vary --which is much of the chaos, as we bark our fevers at one another.
So far, this exchange has looked like this:
Me: "The social justice movement is composed of people who want to increase their own social status by advertising that they have the right opinions."
You: "No, you're wrong. Not only are you wrong, but people who have the same opinions as me are more secure and virtuous than everyone else, and people who don't have those opinions are insecure and terrified of change."
I rest my case.
So you're essentially saying "we should not trust Vagabond's arguments because his penis makes him less aware".
Nobody should "trust arguments"; we use logic and reason to appraise their soundness, their validity, and their strength. That's what philosophy tends to look like. Do I really have to point out that it is fallacious to say "This person's position is more correct because they have X genitals and Y skin color and Z sexual identity"?
In order to perhaps facilitate a better discussion, pretend that everything I say is generated by a room filled with a million monkeys on a million typewriters. That way you cannot possibly try to assassinate my character by appealing to my gender or race as if it is some sort of flaw in my argument.
Alternatively, you could pretend that I am a gay black woman, (I assure you there are gay black women out there who do agree with my positions on the gender pay gap in the west, rape culture in the west, and sexist micro-aggressions in the west), but that might prove more difficult for you, since you feel that the identity of a speaker makes their words more and less true and given that gay black women have the most "authority" on the issues which we're discussing. I really do feel like it would be more productive to speak with you if I outright lied about my gender and race and sexual identity so you simply could not derail the discussion by making it about whether or not I have hidden and internalized misogyny, or the like.
If you would like to discuss "rape culture" or the gender pay gap, I would be happy to; I believe that these two issues do not aptly describe western society. We can get into why I hold these positions, or if you like you could just say that I hold these positions because of my penis, and am therefore wrong.
You've misunderstood my point then. I agree people are trying to increase their own social status, either in terms of a social movement (e.g. trying to improve or respect some issue which affects a particular group) or in terms of their own argument (e.g. we should listen to someone who knows about an issue when they talk about it, rather than just dismissing what they say because we think something else).
My point is this is a good thing. To be concerned out status in these terms is to understand that individuals have a place in society, that human social relationships are not just a matter of saying "everyone's free and has a wise opinion when they speak."
From this page there is a link to an amusing discussion of motte-and-bailey arguments by a poster at Landover Baptist Church.
Green Alert: The site is satirical.
There is something similar about the threatening, edgy, hostility of right wing religious zealots and status-seeking, intersectional, oppressed, colored, female gendered, colonized zealots. There's a If you are not FOR us... (and we'll decide how "for us" you are, and whether you even can even count as "for us") then you are AGAINST us which you almost certainly are if you happen to have a penis, especially a white one.
(I actually don't believe that people can be without bias period, but not everyone has biases against types/categories, such as biases against women, etc.)
My daughter, who is very passionate about these issues, strongly disagrees with me and asserts that it's important to identify and support the 'feminism' label itself, and hence the passionate arguments about what the word means are essential. She thinks I'm a cop-out by deprecating labels.
I'd like to understand her position better, but it's hard to do that with one so passionate (don't get me wrong. I love that she is so passionate about important issues). If anybody in this 'safe space' could explain why some feel the label is important, rather than the policies themselves, I'd appreciate the opportunity to learn about that.
BTW : thanks for the link on motte-and-bailey arguments. I'd heard the term before but didn't know what it was. Now I do, and I think it's a really helpful concept. I doubt their use is correlated with a concern about social justice, as has been suggested, but that's a separate point.
The only reason I say "for the most part" is that sometimes it's handy to apply an "ist" term to oneself (or even a bunch of them) when you're trying to quickly convey some of your general views--like when you're introducing yourself on a site like this. But on the downside, that can be more trouble than it's worth if you're subsequently going to have to spend a bunch of time trying to fix mistaken first impressions.
Speaking for myself, I identify as a feminist - a male feminist - and I think it's important if only to normalize the term, to make it absolutely pedestrian; that is, if one believes in the sorts of things you do (family planning, equal pay, etc), then why not call yourself a feminist? I remember in class once, a tutor asked us - who here is a feminist? - and while alot of people put up their hands, I didn't. I wasn't made to feel guilty about this or anything, it was simply a survey kind of question in the context of a class reading of a feminist text. But I asked myself afterwards quite seriously what it was that prevented me putting my hand up. I couldn't think of any good reason other than that, well, it felt kind of 'girly' to call myself one. I figured this was not quite a good enough reason, especially given that it was clear that my classmates who did identify as feminist and I were more or less in agreement about our views on women, and while I hesitated for a good few years after that class, I'm now comfortable calling myself a feminist (I'm not saying this is the only reason why people don't call themselves feminists - they may be other, perfectly valid reasons - I'm just explaining my own route there).
And that sense of 'comfort' I think is something that ought to go along with that label; the idea of feminism often arouses discomfort, if not hostility, and a big reason is that it is and can be discomforting and hostile. But if you can 'own' that label, and if, as far as you know, you're neither a hostile nor a threatening person (in general!) then so too can feminism be a perfectly 'normal' thing. The label is 'open' to everyone, and if one despairs at some of it's practitioners, all the better to take the opportunity to give the label a better name. Especially so if 'they' are fighting for the same general things that 'you' are. This doesn't automatically mean one will be a 'good feminist' - I still catch myself harbouring prejudice all the time - but trying to live up to that self-imposed label works nicely to remind oneself that one can do better than one is currently doing.
In this sense taking on the label of feminist turns back an 'external division' ('us vs them'/ feminists vs. the world) into an internal one: it becomes a matter of asking how I can be a better feminist than I am. But the more important part is that taking on the label normalizes it. It can show the world that feminism doesn't have to be something scary, something 'other people' do, a monolith that imposes. It makes it comfortable, something close to home, something that belongs to you as much as anyone else. It also makes it imperfect, and something to struggle with, but that's OK. I don't know if this is the 'right' answer to your question, but it does reflect 'my' answer to it. Feminism should be everyday, pedestrian, uncontroversial and 'ownable' by anyone. Anyway, that's my 'if I can feminist so can you' speech.
Well, I doubt either of us believe in some fixed vision of merit or absence of bias. Legislating against sexism and racism is obviously good. The use of free speech against sexism and racism is also great. But 'benevolent' sexism (and racism) casts an obvious shadow. I'm guessing there are some reasonable defenders 'good' sexism/racism out there, but I'm sure there are crazies out there too. I've read them in their own words.
One negative reading of "idealist" is as a person who does what is 'right' without calculating the consequences. If improvement were really the point, I'd expect the language to be more inclusive, less scapegoating. Problem-fixers suggest realistic alternatives, not devils to blame and exorcise. They don't build a persona that depends on the continuation of the problem. Where would some of these folks be without a victim to rescue and an oppressor to accuse?
The emptiness of "who is a feminist" or "true feminism" also comes out in the conflicts over "man-hating", "extremists" or "TERFs." People want to say they "are not really feminist" to make a politcal point, but do not consider the breadth of postion involved.
Any "man-hater", "extremist" or "TERF" is most certainly a feminist-- they are concerned about protecting and advancing the rights of women. On some issues, they just aren't very good. But such failures do not amount to an absence of feminism.
Indeed, some times they are better feminists than many others. Consdering I fall under the trans* umbrella, you might think my ultimate enemy would be TERFs. Surely their hatred of trans women would mean their feminism was nothing like mine? But it's not true. In many respects, our understanding aligns when talking about the oppression of women.
Philosophically, I have more in common with a TERF than many of the mainstream liberals who discuss (or rather dismiss) feminism. In many ways, TERFs care about women's rights just like me, despite their abhorrent understanding of trans women and biological essentialism.
Given the earlier discussion of those who say "men can only be allies," it's worth pointing out how the substanceless of "who is feminist" means it has no impact on a man's feminism if he has one. So what if some feminists say "I'm only an ally" because my body is AMAB? How does that impact on my feminism? I don't become any worse or better as a feminist just because some people say I'm "only an ally." It simply isn't relevant to whether or not a qualify as a feminist.
The controversy over men "only being allies" is really about whether men get to dismiss what feminists say, not whether they can be feminists.
That article actually helped me to understand the motte and bailey a bit more clearly, when I googled it I found myself at "The Rational Wiki" which gave the following definition:
[hide]Quoting The Rational Wiki[/hide]
Seems like the rational-wiki has a slightly politicized description of the motte and bailey. Nominative irony?
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
But that's exactly why many women are ambivalent about the term. They don't want to be confused with man-haters. It's obviously why some men are ambivalent about the term.
I looked up TERF and found this quote:
[quote= Brennen]
transgender woman are in fact men using an artificialy constructed feminine apperance to exert patriarchy from the inside of feminism and believe it or not, to gain access to womans bathrooms in order to rape them.
[/quote]
(Those aren't my misspellings.)
This "patriarchy" is like the devil. Men are the witches (excepting maybe those who cheer from the bench). Is there actually a patriarchy? Well, maybe, but who can use such a sullied word now? 'Rape' is also being smeared around like mayonnaise. If everything is rape, nothing is rape. If everything is patriarchy, nothing is patriarchy.
Only a tiny segment of the population is this twisted, thankfully. I don't take it any more seriously than Stormfront or end-of-the-worlders hiding out in caves or Alex Jones' morbid porn self-righteously purveyed as hidden truth. I don't take politics terribly seriously, either, though. I think we improve our lives more directly by eating well, spending our money well, choosing our friends well, working hard. But then we crave religion, and resentful ideologies look like religions. We've got something on the cross and evil spirits like "patriarchy."
I too wield the sensical and uncontroversial definition of feminism and liberally apply it to myself, not only because it reflects my true positions, but because like you I naively cling to the hope that doing so will encourage some other feminists to clean up their (f)acts. That said, it is idealism to believe that the ever evolving and diverging world of socio-moral/histrionic blame-rendering politics is ever going to converge toward the uncontroversial when controversy is the very fuel which sustains it's growth and existence. This does NOT mean that controversial subjects cannot be important and valid or important to consider, NOR does it mean that "blame rendering" does not have it's time and place, but it does mean that in order for "controversy-finding/blame-rendering politics" (again, not in and of itself a bad thing) to continue to exist as it has in the west, it MUST find controversy.
When we set out with the intention of finding presumably existent sexist oppression in the west (adopting a thick feminist lens) we are inherently biasing ourselves toward finding it. Not only are we made more likely to over-inflate the gravity and proportions of controversial issues that we do find, we're also more likely to completely miss or undervalue examples of "oppression" which might apply to men more so than women.
As sexist oppression against women has subsided in the west, so too has the need and urgency for justice seeking movements on their behalf. The need for our feminism in the west, has subsided. And yet, there are a group of inexplicably vocal "feminists" proliferating across the west whose primary focus is to address injustices in the west. It's simply the nature of all justice movements that the more outrage (their fuel) the stronger their support. And while these new "feminist" movements by no means represent a majority of society at large, they are the one's who are currently growing simply because they are generating the most outrage.
Because of this, the new (re)definition of various words and labels, including feminism, is important in that they are a means-to-outrage in and of themselves. From outside the "safe-space" your answer makes complete sense, and there's really no good reason for anyone to disagree with you, but disagree they will; disagree they must. In the hunt for fuel to burn, specific issues must become magnified and broader issues must also be invoked. This just happens to be the most recent news article returned after a google search of "feminism":
The only thing I would point out about the above quote to make my point more clear is that when it says "we must include people of color as well as those who are LGBTQ and disabled", by "we must include", I think that in practice they mean "we must focus on...". Without this broadening of social injustice and the ensuing outrage, "feminism" would simply be an obsolete or much weaker social cause in the west. The only people that "intersectional feminism" seems to not want to include in their fight for justice are non-elderly able bodied cis-gendered (not transsexual) straight white males, because we are the only people who apparently are not a marginalized group. As such we make handy patsies when an enemy is called for who are both literally and figuratively morally obliged to always be at the back of the line.
Undoing [s]patriarchal[/s] oppressive structures against ALL marginalized people sounds like a great political platform, but it is too broad to pragmatically come under one ultimate social theory to explain and rule them all. It creates a stronger social movement to unite disparate groups facing their own unique challenges and with their combined grievance have it's voice be heard, but this comes at great cost to the efficacy with which these different subgroups have their individual issues and their unique causes actually addressed and remedied. Individual societal issues become blurred and inter-conflated. The diversity of their sources and causes get boiled down to the single external factor which intersectional-feminism's own definitions explicitly exclude from it's fight; supremacist white patriarchy.
It is with great reluctance that I write these posts. It's really not a popular position to come out and oppose the agendas of any "equal rights movement" because it's not as if "too much equality" really seems like a bad thing... Right...? And yet, the pendulum of equality swinging away from the all-privileged white males can only swing so far before it begins to favor the opposite side. Right now about 60% of western university students are female, and while women's scholarships are not at all uncommon, the only "men's scholarship" that I currently know of was started by an MRA provocateur who is routinely censored, slandered, and otherwise silenced by the very same rabid brand of social justice campaigners that have been, at length, described in this thread. So called "mens rights talks" are routinely protested (rabidly) on the grounds that they are just anti-woman misogynist circle-jerks when in reality there are a host of societal issues facing men which really ought to be talked about and which people should have every right to talk about. Things like the prevalence of suicide among males, deaths in the work-place, a legislative and penal system which routinely and disproportionately afflicts men in both family and criminal law, the acceptability of violence being applied to men, and homelessness, all afflict men disproportionately. Regrettably something tells me that "intersectional-feminism" is not an appropriate lens through which to explore, understand, and address these problems.
In the same way that I am a "feminist" I am also a "men-inist"; more broadly I believe we should strive for a fair and egalitarian society. Give me two minutes with any westerner and I could have them assenting to this position without breaking a cranial sweat. But these are not the definitions that make any headlines, get any re-tweets, or inspire any blogs. I really cannot express how unfortunate and disappointing it is that these select few but passionate, vocal, and media-play-getting movements have become so focused upon portraying certain broad identities as victims while establishing other broad identities as aggressors, not because this portrayal accurately reflects reality or is useful to understanding contemporary problems, but instead because the state of victim-hood and the virtue of fighting against oppression are being used as the social and rhetorical currency which drives their internal ideological economy of outrage.
Two of the main issues whose prevalence and magnitude in the west I am skeptical of are the "gender pay gap" and "rape culture", and while this is not a thread created to get into the specific complexities of these issues, I completely disagree with your assertion that this discussion is unproductive. This discussion describes a problem that requires correction, which is a collection of good-intentioned movements which are headed in a host of unreasonable and sometimes harmful directions.
"White supremacist patriarchy" is descriptive not causal. Certain gender and racial disparities themselves constitute "white supremacist patriarchy," not some shadow actors in the background. It's not a force of conspirators which act to constrain the world to particular social organisation.
It's blamed in the sense that, to be rid of it, our society would have to cease being in a state of "white supremacist patriarchy." A question of removing states of the problem themselves, rather than attacking some pre-exisitng causes that making the world into that state.
Intersectional philosophy is "exclusive" for exactly that reason. Trying to understand the oppression of the disabled, black trans women in the terms of the straight able-bodied white male will not work. One will become equivocated with the other, rendering the experiences of the other invisible. If we think about oppression of the able-bodied straight white male, we'll miss all the stuff related to being disabled, black and trans. On the other hand, if we try try the reverse, issues relating to the straight white man will be invisible (e.g. incarnation rates, lack of social support for white men in poverty, shifts in the economy which have destroyed the livelihoods of a short of straight white men, etc.,etc.).
You say that I am issuing strikes against the very idea of feminism itself, but given that I myself am a feminist, evidently we have fundamental disagreements about what feminism should be...
Personally, my feminism is marked by the belief that women should have the same rights under the law and equal access to opportunity in society as men. This differs from the brand of feminism which I oppose, which is marked by vague and dogmatic appeals concepts like "white supremacist patriarchy" which are frequently accompaniment by the casting of aspersions against the innocence of anyone who would question the accuracy of those concepts.
How do you define your feminism?
By your definition, the NBA is a black supremacist patriarchy. Technically, since Asian's make more money than whites, do better in schools than whites, get incarcerated less per capita than whites, etc..., we in some ways could describe the west as being an example of a state of "Asian supremacy".
Certain minorities are facing problems at disproportional rates, but do you really think choosing to label this reality using terms which have perhaps heavier pre-existing connotations of racism and sexism than just about any other word the english language has to offer is a straight-forward way of categorizing these realities?
The traditional definition of "racism" was essentially valuing and discriminating against individuals on the basis of race (an action stemming from a cognitively held position: i.e: "Racism was a causal factor in Billy-Joe's decision to hire only white people"). I understand that the new definition of racism per inter-sectional feminism is "privilege plus power". I understand, per the theory, that since I am white, I have privilege and power, so this makes me by definition racist. I accept that I am racist per the theory, but can you also accept that redefining racism in this way is really strange given that society's previous understanding of the term "racism" might have them conflate "racism" (me being white and the existence of white privilege) with "racism" (me being biased towards/possessing hatred for/unfairly discriminating against people of certain races).? Confused yet?
"Feminism"/"feminist" seems to me to be a term like "existentialism/existentialist." I have a lot of views that people classify as existentialist, but I'd never call myself an existentialist, because it means too many different things to different people, and some of those things I don't agree with. In my experience, especially on message boards like this, what tends to happen upon a self-identification like that is that people assume I believe things that I don't believe--things they associate with existentialism or feminism or whatever, and then it becomes just a battle of trying to distance yourself from that stuff, where the other person won't let go of the fact that you called yourself an existentialist or whatever, and in their view (which on message boards they typically believe is a factually correct view, given online superiority complexes, etc.) existentialism implies x, y and z.
To an extent that tends to be a problem with any self-identification, and I'd prefer to avoid all of it. It's even a problem with most terms of art that occur in academic discourse, such as philosophical discourse. But then it becomes very difficult to talk about the ideas without using any terms of art.
In any event, some "isms" seem fuzzier to me than others for this. And feminism, as well as existentialism, are a couple examples.
They argue that men are responsible for insuring women have equality.
If that is true women can never be equal because they have no power to insure their own equality.
That is to say that women would only have equality if men allowed it.
It would be like a man that argues that men are oppressed because there are not as many men that are validated by being good at care giving as there are women that seek validation from providing care.
Imagine this man went on to claim and blame that women crowd out this space and prevent men opportunity and that is the main, if not only, reason why men are not equal to women at care giving because in reality the majority of men are just as capable and willing to pursue the goal of being a good care giver.
I don't bother debating such a self contradicting position.
If women are equal to men then they are equally responsible for themselves as men are.
It is not the responsibility of men to insure women are equal, and the claim that men are responsible for this is a sexist claim.
Similarly if men want to validate themselves from being good as a care giver then it is the man who is responsible for insuring that he has that opportunity to do so.
Ah, but if women are responsible for their own equality, a lot of that spilt ink about oppression goes down the drain.
My gut feeling is that we would all (men and women alike) rather be other-oppressed than be failed self-liberators. If we fail in our own liberation, we have no one to blame but ourselves. If we fail at overthrowing our oppressor, well, they were just too oppressive to beat. Not our fault!
Does this not also apply to other oppressed groups? Many blacks, gays, latinos, asians, poor whites, etc. claim that they FEEL oppressed, that they are forced to be second or third rate persons by THEM. Blacks and gays both made a lot of progress when they got together in groups and asserted their black and gay pride to one another, then began acting on the premises of that pride. "I'm just as good as you are."
That police kill a disproportionate number of blacks is not a problem of insufficient black pride. The number of blacks killed by each other is.
No argument here.
I agree.
But doesn't liberation require some sort of oppression? i.e. there would be no need for liberation if oppression was not the case?
# liberate one's self from internalized oppression taught by the oppressor
# liberate one's people from external oppression enforced by the oppressor
Different forms of oppression require different approaches. People with significant physical / emotional disorders are sometimes "taught" that they are unable, insufficient, not good enough for... and so on. The oppressive society may be quite solicitous of handicapped people, while inadvertently teaching them that they are really damaged goods.
Once upon a time, most gay men thought they were deviant, sick, diseased pariahs not worthy of manhood. The Gay Liberation Movement changed that for most gay men who experienced this self-liberation, though some guys miss the comfortable closets they preferred to live in.
Whether you are objectively oppressed or subjectively self-oppressed, it is your job to do something about it. The oppressor has no interest in unbinding your chains. The oppressed have chains to lose and a world to gain, so get on with it.
Many women are oppressed. So are many blacks. It is not the job of men or white people to liberate either group. Liberation means concerted action, on the one hand, and taking responsibility for one's existence on the other hand. A woman, for instance, can not join her boyfriend in getting drunk during Oktoberfest, and then claim that he disrespected her by having (or trying to have) sex with her while she was passed out. He was drunk too. Why should his decision-making ability be in working order when hers wasn't? Accept the consequences of getting drunk with your boyfriend (or husband), or don't get drunk.
Blacks can't do a horse shit job of raising their children, and then blame the schools for being racist because their kids arrive at pre-school already developmentally stunted. You can't belittle a black peer for acting white because he's a good student, and then claim you are a victim of racism because you can't express yourself in passable standard English.
Blacks have to end their self-oppression and must conduct political, social, and economic actions to make oppressing them a losing proposition. At one time (into the 1970s) blacks were making good progress. The community lost its way. It's not too late to get back on the right track.
This is a striking example of many of the problems I've sought to describe...
The University of Chicago's 2016 welcome letter includes the following paragraph:
"Our commitment to academic freedom means that we do not support so-called 'trigger warnings,' we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual 'safe spaces' where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own."
T R I G G E R E D
More universities are going to start following suit, not only for their own protection against some of the more unreasonable social justice flack, (I.E: students calling for staff admission of white privilege and formal resignations.... Yes, that has happened....) but also because more and more students are becoming aware of and openly opposed to the rhetoric and ideologies which we are seeing go too far. "A free and open market place of ideas" is sometimes directly opposed by these groups, perhaps with important repercussions as it seems that on level playing field most of these ideas fall flat.
The all too sad truth is however that tens of thousands of these kinds of videos exist; I only posted this one because it happened to be the most recent example. This overall ideology might not be representative of the majority of students or westerners at large, but it is out there and has a nucleus capable of reproducing more of itself. Startling and fascinating...
I have sympathies with second-wave feminism in that they take seriously the notion of gender separation and gender abolition. Aren't the identity-fems just playing games?
BitterCrank's views also interest me. I think there may be a link between being attracted to men and being skeptical of these sorts of things: a heterosexual man, I think, simply cannot remove the smokescreen of his sexual attractions in thinking about women in any way. They will always have a higher value for him than another man because of biological impetus. I'm attracted to women as well, but I think even that there is another sexual option on the table helps remedy this blindness.
I wonder how you would have approached this comment had you not known that I was a man...
Can you even imagine how you might have responded if you didn't have my penis to attack? Or if I happened to have a vagina and you a penis?
It would have read something like: "As a man my opinion on issues facing women is not valid, and the best that I can do to support your plight is to listen, believe, and to support your thoughts even while I am unable to comprehend them. You're a hero."
I'm sorry if this seems "sinister" but I feel like I must go out of my way to combat fallacious appeals to character and identity, especially here on what is meant to be a forum of reason and argumentation.
Put simply, you have not confronted a single solitary point that I have raised in this thread. All you have done is allege that I am a sinister man and that yourself and feminists should be repulsed by me. You have played the exact same morally bankrupt game of thinking that skin color or genitalia is a rational or moral grounds through to question or attack someone that I have depicted in this thread.
You have just demonstrated the cognitive and social results of the identity politics that has infected not just feminism but many other contemporary social justice movements as well. As a feminist I resent your notion that men can only be "allies" and I feel like your ideological camp is giving the entire label a bad name. Get your act together please ;)
Wow - imagine now these kids want their contraception paid by the state. As if they had a right - that had to be guaranteed by the state - to have sex >:O
Whatever brand of feminism you do in fact subscribe to, if it is inherently opposed to my own then I would find it a very easy moral step to rebuke it. Short of any substance on that matter whatsoever, please see the following post for a riveting exposition of the brand of reasoning which in this thread I am presently engaged in dismantling. Enjoy!
"Codename: "Mungus"
On the heels of her brush with internet fate, the now well known advocate of extreme social justice, Zarna Joshi, has taken to youtube in order spread awareness of exactly how patriarchy makes her feel...
The following is a condensed but un-exaggerated account of one of those videos...
Part 1: Surrounded by Patriarchy...
[TRIGGER WARNING]
May contain mentions of sexual harassment, assault, rape, violence, gun violence, murder, imprisonment, historical trauma, abuse, and suicide...
~ Hard Transition ~
The illness of patriarchy doesn't infect just men; in fact some women are infected with patriarchy. These women ridicule me. 71% Of women blame rape victims for being raped but only 57% of men blame rape victims for being raped; that's called "internalized patriarchy"
~ Hard Transition ~
Patriarchy is what created: racism, colonialism, capitalism, classism, and of course sexism.
~ Hard Transition ~
Somebody called me a "pre-menstrual hysterical third wave feminist dothead retard who went full mental on a white man". And they called me unintelligent too.
~ Hard Transition ~
I'm not white, so that gives me a right to talk about my non-white experience, but many other non-white people and also some marginalized and possibly white people like queer, trans, and non-gender conforming people might have their own actual ideas and opinions about this stuff, so I want to apologize in advance for saying something that you might not agree with or that might not apply to your particular marginalized group.
[VISUAL] - Text reads: Queer YOUTH 3x more likely to attempt suicide than Hetero youth - Image: On screen are two circles, one is labeled Queer, and the other is labeled Hetero. The radius of the Queer circle is three times (3x) the radius of the Hetero circle, giving it 9 times the surface area which visually misrepresents the text data by nearly a full order of magnitude.
~ Hard Transition ~
People ridicule me on the internet some more, and I just want to say how hard ridicule makes it to express my true feelings.
~ Hard Transition ~
Men who sexually harass women and subject women of color to racial slurs cannot understand why these women will not then date them; it's because of something called "White Male Fragility". Western men have been fooled by the system into believing that if they do not sexually harass or abuse anyone, or discriminate or use insensitive terms against people based on race or gender, then they are therefore somehow "now sexist" or "not racist". This is not true
ALL WHITE PEOPLE ARE RACIST, AND ALL MEN ARE SEXIST, as ensured by the system of power that we live in because it's a system that profits from the marginalization of people of color and non-males. And so they ridicule me in order to retain their power structure just as they have done to women and people of color for centuries.
~ Hard Transition ~
People call me sexist and racist against whites and males and ask why I hate them...
Men make more money...
[VISUAL] Cites numbers of a gender "pay gap" for women of varying ethnicities as compared to white men ranging from 54% for hispanic women to 90% for asian women.
Men take their privilege without question and live in affluence while doing nothing to help women while denying that they profit from sexist oppression.
~ Hard Transition ~
I was sexually harassed while filming a man who told me that his name was "hugh mungus" and one mainstream media outlet posted the video on the internet, without my permission, (I originally uploaded the video to my Facebook in order to provide evidence of my harassment and to issue a call to arms to rise up against Hugh and his institutional powers of sexism), and they had the nerve to ask "Do you consider this video to depict sexual harassment?". This lead to people ridiculing me. This is what patriarchy does; it causes people to attack the victim because they are vulnerable, which protects their system of power, which is male sexual dominance.
~ Hard Transition ~
People accused me of overreacting on the internet, but also some people issued rape and death threats against me. My physical safety is on the line, and that should be an indicator as to whether or not I am right.
~ Hard Transition ~
Their main complaint was that I raised my voice; they thought I was crazy. Really they just wanted me to shut up because that's what a patriarchial society wants, and we have a long history of confining women to mental asylums because men thought they were too loud.
These same men rape and murder women because they cannot deal with emotions, so that's why they got angry about when I was making noise about my sexual harassment; men don't care about my safety.
~ Hard Transition ~
Men call my accent sexy but my voice annoying. Dick jokes bother me. Men stone women, burn them at the stake, beat them, and rape them, and sell them into sexual slavery, and that's why dick jokes bother me.
Men think that it's not rape if you're married, and that sexual harassment can only happen in formal workplace environments.
~ Hard Transition ~
Dear sister-women and queer and trans siblings. Even the most minute and anonymous transgression against you on the internet will not be tolerated. Permitting tiny injustices like being called a cunt is what leads to larger horrors like the rape and violence that we all know so well. We have to dismantle our own internalized patriarchy, we need to change the world.
We must demand an end to rape culture.
~ Hard Transition ~
We must encourage men to dismantle patriarchy because patriarchy hurts men too by making them fragile and unable to reveal their feelings, which is why they do physical and sexual violence against women.
With courage and dignity, we can do this!
.....
[Part 2: "Internalized Oppression" - Coming Soon...]
[END]
It might seem like I've embellished this, and so if you would like to review the original material for accuracy, here it is (Cringe warning: click at your own risk :D )
Just from what I have read so far in things like the SCUM manifesto and Cell 16, radfem is not really about egalitarianism but more about the superiority of the female sex.
What's interesting about the author of the SCUM manifesto is that although she thinks the female sex is superior, it seems like she thinks that this is only because the male sex is fucked up and the female sex is less-fucked up. Indeed she had antinatalist beliefs, where she essentially said that the male sex had to be exterminated, and then the female sex would only have female babies until a little later, when the female sex would also be exterminated.
And yes, I understand that the SCUM manifesto might have been satirical but it nevertheless spawned things like Cell 16.
Anyway some defining characteristics of radfem that I have seen and would like to discuss seem to be:
I might be wrong about some/most/all of the things stated above, but please keep in mind that I'm only beginning to get a grasp of what radical feminism is.
More mainsteam feminism, in my opinion, should just be called egalitarianism. Anything that focuses on the rights of a single group should be labeled as such.
All of that has been achieved. Now, feminists have other priorities, such as manspreading and dismissing rape because that would be considered islamophobia, xenophobia or racism. Respect different cultures mmkay you bigot!?
[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQglZPVmoo8]Most people do not consider themselves “feminists” but do believe in equal rights if you’d ask them.
I am one of the seven percent. I am a conservative feminist.
This specific debate is surely a historical debate nowadays? I've lived through the various phases of feminism as a pro-feminist man of some sort. You know, on a personal level, bras were out, then bras were in; shaved legs were submission to the patriarchy, then they were ok if they made you feel good. Once people have overthrown some petty prohibition they can be free to make their own choices. But it's still not clear whether women have been able to 'reclaim the streets' or occupy the corridors of power in a lasting way.
Here in the UK, at any rate, the era of radical feminism was the 70's and 80's, and the ones I read were really intelligent and provocative: Kate Millett, Shulamith Firestone, Mary Daly on a radical theology, Andrea Dworkin on pornography, Miller/Swift on 'Words and women'. There doesn't seem to me to be any substitute for actually reading them, and/or the poetry of Adrienne Rich, the novels of Attwood, of Toni Morrison and Alice Walker, in philosophy later, Judith Butler and bell hooks.
I don't know how I would get back to a view of feminism as 'just...egalitarianism': even in the mainstream it requires a rethinking of who each of us is. In virtually every society and era except our own women have been treated as second-class: that needs some reflection and resolution.
Nor, however, have I ever known a made-by-women feminist list like yours, except the ones drawn up by antagonistic men who were trying to discredit a much subtler and more illuminating set of ideas. I don't think such lists ever make sense. There is an analysis of patriarchy, there are theories, there are ideas for action. There aren't simple bullet-points of anti-men statements to swallow before a radfem bedtime. Perhaps I'm naive, but overthrowing patriarchy always seemed to me a good idea.
Now things are different, but fragile. I don't know where the old radfems are and who their successors claim to be. It's quite a leap, in two or three generations, for young women now to outperform men at university, for instance; my generation of women were having to fight for every little concession for a long time: these may be fragile gains if a more conservative mindset takes a hold.
Dworkin I know was against the idea of female superiority, but my point was that some radical feminists continue to believe that men ought to be exterminated, and are highly sex-negative.
Well, where are they? I found a men's rights blog quoting a woman writer under the headline 'Radical feminist advocates for the extermination of men', for instance, but the headline is a paranoid lie. There is not talk of killing, extermination or anything of that ilk in the woman's article, just dreams of women working together with other women, together with some admittedly far-out imagined solutions to the man problem, like genetic modification :) If you then follow the trail of that blog, the 'men's rights advocate' subsequently engaged in a creepy stalking campaign to out the woman who was writing under a pseudonym. The radfem collective blog is now an archive, perhaps the women have had to go underground, I don't know. The lesson of that to me is that the male misogynist bullies are still winning when they can pick the ground to fight.
I'm sure there are groups of women who are highly anti-men, and some who are 'sex-negative' as you put it. To me the rich recent feminist literature is much more worth exploring than chasing after a threat that to me isn't there.