Feminism

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Ciarán12
Feminism

Postby Ciarán12 » 2013-04-27, 4:52

After all the debate on this topic on UL, I find it amazing we don't have a specific thread for it. So here it is.

My position is the same as this guy's:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZiarrgcahw

The only difference is, I never thought "Feminism" was a good name for it, and have always associated it with the extremists. I've been using "Egalitarianism", he uses "Individualism", but I hold the same position.

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Re: Feminism

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-27, 5:30

I'm not watching that video because tl;dw but my position on feminism is simple: liberal feminism is better than radical feminism, third-wave feminism is better than second-wave feminism*, and individualism is better than collectivism. One individualist feminist I admire is Camille Paglia**.

*Third-wave feminism is broader and tends to be more post-modern, but also there's more room for what feminists call "sex-positivity", which is way better than the "stop having fun guys" anti-porn, anti-sex mentality of second-wavers like Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin.

**Except for her views on transsexualism. I don't get why so many feminists are transphobic.
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Re: Feminism

Postby Ciarán12 » 2013-04-27, 5:38

mōdgethanc wrote:I'm not watching that video because tl;dw but my position on feminism is simple: liberal feminism is better than radical feminism, third-wave feminism is better than second-wave feminism*, and individualism is better than collectivism. One individualist feminist I admire is Camille Paglia**.

*Third-wave feminism is broader and tends to be more post-modern, but also there's more room for what feminists call "sex-positivity", which is way better than the "stop having fun guys" anti-porn, anti-sex mentality of second-wavers like Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin.

**Except for her views on transsexualism. I don't get why so many feminists are transphobic.


Not that I know all of the ins and outs of the arguments put forward by the people you mentioned, but it sounds pretty much like what the guy in the video is saying.

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Re: Feminism

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-27, 6:27

Not that I know all of the ins and outs of the arguments put forward by the people you mentioned, but it sounds pretty much like what the guy in the video is saying.
Basically you have the "sex is rape and pornography is violence against women" old guard, and the "deconstructing the arbitrary nature of gender roles" new wave. Where feminists of all kinds go wrong, IMO, is that they ascribe way too much influence to the role of socialization in human behaviour and tend to outright ignore biology. I'm not just referring to putative gender differences, mind you.
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Re: Feminism

Postby Ciarán12 » 2013-04-27, 6:31

mōdgethanc wrote:Where feminists of all kinds go wrong, IMO, is that they ascribe way too much influence to the role of socialization in human behaviour and tend to outright ignore biology. I'm not just referring to putative gender differences, mind you.


In what ways do you think they tend to ignore biological differences in favour of a social explanation?

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Re: Feminism

Postby Johanna » 2013-04-27, 6:43

The thing about biology is that it's used as an excuse to force people into gender roles, which is probably why modern feminism tends to ignore it.

I don't think that anyone who knows the ins and outs of the whole thing deny that the average man differs from the average woman, but they are just that: averages, and there's a lot of overlapping, so it doesn't say much about the individual.

In other words: there are men who are more "female" than most women, and there are women who are more "male" than most men, and they still fall within the normal category for their own gender.
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Re: Feminism

Postby Ciarán12 » 2013-04-27, 6:54

Johanna wrote:The thing about biology is that it's used as an excuse to force people into gender roles, which is probably why modern feminism tends to ignore it.

I don't think that anyone who knows the ins and outs of the whole thing deny that the average man differs from the average woman, but they are just that: averages, and there's a lot of overlapping, so it doesn't say much about the individual.

In other words: there are men who are more "female" than most women, and there are women who are more "male" than most men, and they still fall within the normal category for their own gender.


I definitely agree that individual variation is greater than gender-based similarity, which is why almost any generalisations of what "men" are like or what "women" are like annoy me. Unfortunately, I hear these kinds of remarks from most feminists about "men" as much as I do from male chauvinists about "women".

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Re: Feminism

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-27, 6:56

Ciarán12 wrote:In what ways do you think they tend to ignore biological differences in favour of a social explanation?
One extremely controversial debate is over whether rape is some sort of adaptation as opposed to a manifestation of the patriarchy's dehumanization of women or whatever. I wouldn't rule it out as a possible explanation, even a partial one, though it would suggest some ugly truths about human nature. (On the other hand, rape is quite common in the animal kingdom.) Evolutionary psychology is quite controversial in general, partly because of some of the hypotheses it has about sexual selection and reproduction (for example, that men tend to prefer partners who are younger because they are more fertile, or that women prefer men who are financially stable because of the greater costs to them of pregnancy). Sometimes it seems like even suggesting men and women may not be completely identical in every possible way is grounds for excommunication among feminists.

Also, going back to my point about many feminists being transphobic: Transsexuals are much like homosexuals in that they show neurological differences that are present from an early age if not from birth, suggesting that transsexualism is not a "fad" as Camille Paglia supposedly said but a biological trait that proves that gender identity is innate and not something that's made up by the patriarchy to "Other" women and make them feel oppressed or something.

Note I'm aware that I'm being hyperbolic about what mainstream feminists believe, but I'm sure there are some on the lunatic fringe of the movement who really do believe crap like all hetero sex being based in rape.
Johanna wrote:The thing about biology is that it's used as an excuse to force people into gender roles, which is probably why modern feminism tends to ignore it.
It can be, but ignoring it can also be used as an excuse to force people into preconceived notions about how they should behave as well.
I don't think that anyone who knows the ins and outs of the whole thing deny that the average man differs from the average woman, but they are just that: averages, and there's a lot of overlapping, so it doesn't say much about the individual.
I wish I could say this is a mainstream view in feminism, but it doesn't seem like it is.
In other words: there are men who are more "female" than most women, and there are women who are more "male" than most men, and they still fall within the normal category for their own gender.
Of course. Gender essentialism is a very bad thing.
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Re: Feminism

Postby ffrench » 2013-04-27, 9:42

Ciarán12 wrote:My position is the same as this guy's:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZiarrgcahw
The biggest fault with this argument is that he realises himself that what he calls "feminists" are not nearly the majority of feminists, but ignores most of feminism because he feels victimised by some. I can admire the chutzpah in inviting all feminists minus the radicals to join his new, libertarian-infused feminism, but really he's just perpetuating the idea that all feminist are man-haters not living in the "real world".

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Re: Feminism

Postby johnklepac » 2013-04-27, 15:21

Dude's voice really gets to me, but I watched about a third of the video and it seems like he should just be distancing himself from a segment of the feminist movement, not declaring himself not a feminist.

mōdgethanc wrote:I'm not watching that video because tl;dw but my position on feminism is simple: liberal feminism is better than radical feminism, third-wave feminism is better than second-wave feminism*, and individualism is better than collectivism. One individualist feminist I admire is Camille Paglia**.

*Third-wave feminism is broader and tends to be more post-modern, but also there's more room for what feminists call "sex-positivity", which is way better than the "stop having fun guys" anti-porn, anti-sex mentality of second-wavers like Gloria Steinem and Andrea Dworkin.

**Except for her views on transsexualism. I don't get why so many feminists are transphobic.

I pretty much agree with all of that.

Also, just throwing it out there: I hate how stigmatized the word "masculist" is, though the bad apples within the movement who don't come close to following the doctrine at its core make this inevitable.

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Re: Feminism

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-27, 15:59

"Feminism" is practically a slur to some people, mind you.
The biggest fault with this argument is that he realises himself that what he calls "feminists" are not nearly the majority of feminists, but ignores most of feminism because he feels victimised by some. I can admire the chutzpah in inviting all feminists minus the radicals to join his new, libertarian-infused feminism, but really he's just perpetuating the idea that all feminist are man-haters not living in the "real world".
I don't think that academic feminism as found in wymyn's studies departments everywhere necessarily represents what women who identify themselves as feminists actually believe. If I were a woman, I think I might be more concerned with pressing issues like the gender wage gap, disgustingly high rape statistics and repeated attempts to infringe on my reproductive freedoms than armchair revolutionary crap like dismantling the kyriarchy.

Besides that, I doubt this guy is victimized by feminists at all. I might find some (hardly all) feminists annoyingly misandrist, but I'm not going to cry "oppression!" because some idiot on the Internet said all men are rapists.
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Re: Feminism

Postby Johanna » 2013-04-27, 16:02

mōdgethanc wrote:
Johanna wrote:I don't think that anyone who knows the ins and outs of the whole thing deny that the average man differs from the average woman, but they are just that: averages, and there's a lot of overlapping, so it doesn't say much about the individual.

I wish I could say this is a mainstream view in feminism, but it doesn't seem like it is.

All feminists I've spoken to has this view, it's the people that they argue with that say that feminism is all about taking away genders altogether or blaming all men personally for how women have been (and still are in many places) treated. Red herring and all that...

Edit: of course there are misandrist feminists, but they aren't mainstream. Just like how Stalinism isn't the mainstream leftish movement any more.
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Re: Feminism

Postby Lur » 2013-04-27, 16:05

mōdgethanc wrote:If I were a woman, I think I might be more concerned with pressing issues like the gender wage gap, disgustingly high rape statistics and repeated attempts to infringe on my reproductive freedoms than armchair revolutionary crap like dismantling the kyriarchy.

The part in red is part of the part in green.
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Re: Feminism

Postby johnklepac » 2013-04-27, 16:44

mōdgethanc wrote:"Feminism" is practically a slur to some people, mind you.

Oh, I know. But we've had lengthy discussions on Unilang - some of which I've been involved in - on how widely misunderstood the term is. The term "masculism" has had no such discussions.

Luke wrote:
mōdgethanc wrote:If I were a woman, I think I might be more concerned with pressing issues like the gender wage gap, disgustingly high rape statistics and repeated attempts to infringe on my reproductive freedoms than armchair revolutionary crap like dismantling the kyriarchy.

The part in red is part of the part in green.

The green goal is astronomically more difficult not just to accomplish but to tell when you've accomplished (assuming the kyriarchy even exists) than the red ones.

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Re: Feminism

Postby Lur » 2013-04-27, 16:48

Because you have to go through all the red ones. The reason the kyriarchy it's assumed to exist is because all the red ones exist affecting everybody (depending on sex, physonomy, language, procedence, personality, sexual orientation, beauty, economic class, whatever).The kyriarchy is that, not some mysterious super-entity. Or at least that's how I understand it. In the end the word might just be short for a list of all of that. The idea is that people don't exist on isolated groups of oppressed and oppressors, and that people aren't "oppressors" by merely existing.



On the subject of "feminism". I know people are put off that something supposedly positive has the name of "one side". I don't really care about that. I do notice that feminism seems to include quite a few different things and it's confusing. I consider myself a feminist, but some "other feminists " and sexist people are very annoying to me.



I have been thinking on what women tell me about feeling constantly stared at by men (normally in the form of blank creepy stares). The way some of the put it, it almost sounds like a constant persecution. I am trying to understand the exact reason for the apparent unbalance of this phenomenon. Why do men look at women? Do women not look at men the same way, and if they do, do men not notice it or react differently? Why? And how would this go in an environment composed of women attracted to women and one of men attracted to men? What's the separate influence of the individual, of hormones and of culture on this whole thing?

So far I can only reexamine my own doing, and I'll describe it because I feel it's probably just the same for a lot of people regardless of sex (although I might be wrong about that, but who knows). I do notice a lot the appearance of women around me. If I'm in a bus or something and I feel very attracted to someone I can't help to try some quick shy peek to at her without being noticed (normally I feel a slight blush and I'm unsettled by the idea of being caught), and then that's it. In other occasions, I noticed I was looking at people almost subconsciously while thinking on whatever (my mind drifts a lot), certainly not on the people I was looking at. Normally I try to to avoid eye contact with people I'm not interacting with in public settings, focusing on random inofensive things. I don't think a simplistic and somewhat nonsensical "men have a greater natural tendency to look at what they are attracted to" explains this whole thing.

Sorry for the long boring post :lol:
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Re: Feminism

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-27, 19:00

Show me the kyriarchy exists and isn't just a conflation of several different and only marginally related social issues.
The idea is that people don't exist on isolated groups of oppressed and oppressors, and that people aren't "oppressors" by merely existing.
While it's true that various kinds of discrimination can overlap, I wouldn't necessarily assume a problem like the wage gap has any causal relationship with racism or something.
I have been thinking on what women tell me about feeling constantly stared at by men (normally in the form of blank creepy stares). The way some of the put it, it almost sounds like a constant persecution. I am trying to understand the exact reason for the apparent unbalance of this phenomenon. Why do men look at women? Do women not look at men the same way, and if they do, do men not notice it or react differently? Why? And how would this go in an environment composed of women attracted to women and one of men attracted to men? What's the separate influence of the individual, of hormones and of culture on this whole thing?
I'm pretty sure (straight) women look at and notice attractive men, and even (gasp) objectify them for their bodies, even if they aren't as obvious about it as men are.

Now that doesn't mean anyone has a right to stare creepily at someone and make them feel uncomfortable, but there's nothing wrong with thinking someone else is attractive. The problem is men (or women) thinking their attention is always wanted.
So far I can only reexamine my own doing, and I'll describe it because I feel it's probably just the same for a lot of people regardless of sex (although I might be wrong about that, but who knows). I do notice a lot the appearance of women around me. If I'm in a bus or something and I feel very attracted to someone I can't help to try some quick shy peek to at her without being noticed (normally I feel a slight blush and I'm unsettled by the idea of being caught), and then that's it. In other occasions, I noticed I was looking at people almost subconsciously while thinking on whatever (my mind drifts a lot), certainly not on the people I was looking at. Normally I try to to avoid eye contact with people I'm not interacting with in public settings, focusing on random inofensive things. I don't think a simplistic and somewhat nonsensical "men have a greater natural tendency to look at what they are attracted to" explains this whole thing.
Why is it nonsensical? You're begging the question by assuming it's not true. But even if it is true, men are still responsible for their actions. As Spartacus says, "I am not an animal".
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Re: Feminism

Postby johnklepac » 2013-04-27, 19:04

Luke wrote:Because you have to go through all the red ones.

Wait a sec. We're agreeing. But there's also a lot more red stuff that would also go into the green - perhaps an infinite amount, which is part of why modgethanc and I think that pursuing the green goal itself, without attention to the red ones, isn't a good idea.

Luke wrote:The idea is that people don't exist on isolated groups of oppressed and oppressors, and that people aren't "oppressors" by merely existing.

I disagree. Per this, a kyriarchy is based on privilege (which, insofar as it is indeed a viable concept, allows people to be oppressors just by existing), and people have one level of privilege for each of their demographic groups.

Luke wrote:And how would this go in an environment composed of women attracted to women and one of men attracted to men?

There wouldn't be asymmetrical amounts of perceived persecution by gender.

Luke wrote:I don't think a simplistic and somewhat nonsensical "men have a greater natural tendency to look at what they are attracted to" explains this whole thing.

My guess is that, growing up and into adulthood, men are discouraged from being shy and timid more than women are.

Luke wrote:Sorry for the long boring post :lol:

It's not that long by Unilang standards. I liked reading it, anyhow.

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Re: Feminism

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-27, 19:32

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Re: Feminism

Postby Lur » 2013-04-27, 19:41

mōdgethanc wrote:Show me the kyriarchy exists and isn't just a conflation of several different and only marginally related social issues.
The idea is that people don't exist on isolated groups of oppressed and oppressors, and that people aren't "oppressors" by merely existing.
While it's true that various kinds of discrimination can overlap, I wouldn't necessarily assume a problem like the wage gap has any causal relationship with racism or something.

I don't think the implication is that the different issues have a direct relationship. A physical or causal one. It's not about the causes of the issues, it's about the different collections of issues that happen to you putting you in a different social position to others. Thus alienation, etc Or at least that's how I understand it.

mōdgethanc wrote:Why is it nonsensical? You're begging the question by assuming it's not true. But even if it is true, men are still responsible for their actions. As Spartacus says, "I am not an animal".

When I wrote that, I had a reason in my head for it which I didn't write, I now it's gone from my mind :para:

johnklepac wrote:
Luke wrote:Because you have to go through all the red ones.

Wait a sec. We're agreeing. But there's also a lot more red stuff that would also go into the green - perhaps an infinite amount, which is part of why modgethanc and I think that pursuing the green goal itself, without attention to the red ones, isn't a good idea.

Right, but that's because the green thing is an abstract one. Theoritically, you have to go for the red ones, otherwise you're just there being angry thinking very hard on the situation :lol:

Luke wrote:The idea is that people don't exist on isolated groups of oppressed and oppressors, and that people aren't "oppressors" by merely existing.

I disagree. Per this, a kyriarchy is based on privilege (which, insofar as it is indeed a viable concept, allows people to be oppressors just by existing), and people have one level of privilege for each of their demographic groups.

But that definition of privilege which allows people to be oppressors by existing is bollocks and not a viable concept.

Anyway, the reason I prefer the kyriarchy to the patriarchy is because it seems wider. Sexism in one direction carries sexism in the inverse direction, normally. So it covers the whole thing.It's very hard to defeat sexism by solving solely sexism against one sex because it can retroaliment and you get nowhere.

Luke wrote:And how would this go in an environment composed of women attracted to women and one of men attracted to men?

There wouldn't be asymmetrical amounts of perceived persecution by gender.

My point was one group compared to another. But probably depends too much on the culture of each group.

Luke wrote:I don't think a simplistic and somewhat nonsensical "men have a greater natural tendency to look at what they are attracted to" explains this whole thing.

My guess is that, growing up and into adulthood, men are discouraged from being shy and timid more than women are.

Well men are cast into the hyperagent role so it wouldn't surprise me in the slightless.


Wanna talk phonology? :lol:
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Re: Feminism

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-27, 20:26

But that definition of privilege which allows people to be oppressors by existing is bollocks and not a viable concept.
Well, I'm certainly glad we agree about that.
Anyway, the reason I prefer the kyriarchy to the patriarchy is because it seems wider. Sexism in one direction carries sexism in the inverse direction, normally. So it covers the whole thing. You can't defeat sexism by solving solely sexism against one sex because it retroaliments and you will perpetually fail at it.
Well, yeah. That's why feminists get so much criticism for perceived misandry or just focusing solely on women's issues and ignoring men's issues. I think this is changing though and nowadays feminists are more likely to realize that men's issues deserve to be taken seriously too, although I still see SJAs claiming it's impossible for women to be sexist against men/minorities to be racist against whites/etc.
I don't think the implication is that the different issues have a direct relationship. A physical or causal one. It's not about the causes of the issues, it's about the different collections of issues that happen to you putting you in a different social position to others. Thus alienation, etc. Or at least that's how I understand it.
Maybe, but this thread is about sexism, not racism or any other kind of discrimination. So talking about the kyriarchy isn't really constructive to solving gender issues that exist right now. How about we just say people shouldn't be dicks to other people? Because that's basically what "dismantling the kyriachy" means, deep down.
Well men are cast into the hyperagent role so it wouldn't surprise me in the slightless.
Which is a fancy way of saying men are supposed to make the first move, or as TvTropes says, Men Act, Women Are. (Also shades of All Men Are Perverts and All Women Are Prudes.)
Wanna talk phonology? :lol:
Sure. How do you think the prosody of women differs from that of men due to enforced gender roles?
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