Against feminism

Great Debates
141

What I’m saying is that the law doesn’t treat all decisions as anything. Intoxication is relevant in different circumstances in different ways. You are combining them all into one big pile and asking about what you are defining as “accountability for decisions,” which is an idea that doesn’t come directly from the law, but from a sort of philosophical reading into the purposes of various laws. That makes my response to your hypothetical kind of anticlimactic, for one thing, but it also has the effect of making it seem like you think the complainant in a rape situation is necessarily the one who made the “decision” that determined whether a rape occurred. And that latter part, committed feminist or not, has non-feminist practical effects. I’ll just answer the question, though.

No. But that’s because you painted a scenario in which she wasn’t raped, not because of some parallel between the two “decisions.” There are two questions, and they’re separate ones with almost nothing to do with each other.

  1. Did she drive while drunk?
  2. Did he have sexual intercourse with her without her consent?

With respect to 1, the ‘decision’ to do so is a red herring and irrelevant to prosecution. There’s no mental state required to be guilty of a DUI. She’s being prosecuted for operating a motor vehicle while under the influence of alcohol.

With respect to 2, you stated outright that she “let him,” which means you answered the question about consent. By definition, that isn’t a rape, and isn’t a very difficult question. What you’re asking boils down to whether or not I want you to call a false rape allegation a real rape. I don’t. And under your facts, it’s pretty easy to see why you’re conflating her responsibility for a criminal act with her status as a rape victim or not: you made her a lying whore, didn’t you? No wonder you’re outraged. But other than those being two bad things you made her do, they’re completely disconnected.

It’s kind of troubling that so many people think that this is the difficult scenario. It suggests that a lot of people still don’t really understand what the point of rape law is (which given that so many people seem so angry about rape law all the time, isn’t surprising). If she consented, it isn’t rape.

If by “let him” you mean that she didn’t stop him, and that she was so drunk that she actually couldn’t consent, then it was rape. But I hope you see that those are different things and that it would be a pretty awful mischaracterization to call that “letting” him. There’s really only a perfunctory conversation to be had about a situation where you’ve established the “victim” as an irresponsible lying drunken tramp who wasn’t raped and said she was.

142

Great. We agree. So the issue of her intoxication is irrelevant. Either she consented or she didn’t. If she’s not conscious, she can’t consent and she was raped. If she was conscious and in no respect expressed disagreement with the idea of sex, she was not raped.

Glad we cleared that up.

Oh and all that whore stuff? Totally in your head, don’t lay it on me. I’ve been all kinds of sex worker and I’m related to honest-to-god whores and I’m totally good with it. I’m completely sex-positive, so project that shit somewhere else.

Lying, on the other hand, disgusts me utterly.

143

You’re misstating what consent is. The idea that merely being conscious and not fighting back equals consent is a pretty antiquated one, and it’s incorrect. What you are saying the law says – the thing you are “with the FBI” about – is not what the law actually says. The fact that you made up your own scenario where a rape didn’t happen is not proof that rape doesn’t ever happen where the victim is intoxicated, and that’s what tumbleddown was talking about when you responded.

You drew the parallel between rape and drunk driving. It doesn’t hold. You made reference to “letting her off the hook,” which is, in the real world, a very common form of rhetoric that serves to put the emphasis on the rape victim when actual rapes occur, and suggested that as long as it’s illegal to drive drunk, it shouldn’t be illegal to rape a drunk girl. Which is fine; it’s your opinion (sex-positive or not), but then you said that the law recognized that specious connection. It doesn’t. That is what I’m pointing out. The fact that you offered a hypothetical scenario in which no rape occurred doesn’t mean your initial premises were valid.

144

No, actually you’re misstating what I said. “not fighting back” and “in no way expressed disagreement” are not the same things.

No it’s not.

Any time you want to do this by dealing with what I actually say, I’m there.

So long as your only way to argue is to tell me I said, think, mean, intend and opine things I do not, no thanks.

145

I asked you to just say what you think the law is. These are the games I was trying to avoid.

146

Then you shouldn’t play them. And you should pay closer attention.

I was talking about my point of view, bouncing off the someone else’s description of the FBI definition, and throughout my comments I’ve been very specific about exactly what I AM referring to and exactly what I am NOT referring to, and I’ve described it consistently. And apart from making a casual rhetorical remark, I was not arguing the law at any point.

Which I never imagined might be unclear, since I was asking for your** thoughts** and your** opinions** about these issues. ( Not to mention the simple fact that rape law is what it is and it’s available to be read and referred to, why in the world would I be randomly arguing about them, especially without actually linking to and/or quoting them, which would of course end the “debate” about what they actually say? That’s sort of pointless, don’t you think?)

See what I said, note that it’s been the same since before you chimed in:

And here I am asking you for your logic, thoughts, opinions, reasoning:

Note the complete lack of any reference to whether a particular law says anything at all and the total focus on your argument, your POV, your logic.
So if you don’t have any opinions, reasoning or logic about any of this, fine. We’re done then.

If you do, please share.

But it isn’t about what the laws do or don’t say…its about what the laws SHOULD say, and your reasoning for why.

147

Quite. Which is why it’s pretty amazing so many people, all of my 14 different classes of adult students within the last ten years, didn’t get this riddle right away. Perhaps my little data point is a statistical anomaly? Or perhaps it’s a sign that there’s a shitload of cultural baggage coming into play when answering this riddle for a pretty big, albeit anecdotical, sample of adults?

Like, I don’t know, the “bitches be lying” trope might be more salient to adults, within/because of the context of the riddle, than son-has-another parent, the-mother”? Or perhaps, there is still such a deep ingrained idea within western culture that standard humans come in the male form, that once a group jumps to the paternity issue first, (which all of them did) , thinking outside of the male box becomes indeed thinking outside the box? Or something else entirely?

Anyhow, this riddle has become my personal funny little cultural datapoint, that all is not as well as assumed in our post feminist society. And not ha-ha funny as I’d much rather be facing a class react to the damn riddle as a totally stupid-where-is-the-riddle riddle too.

148

Wow, this thread has gone to a pretty unfortunate mess, so if you’ll all bear with me, I’ll just put some of my thoughts down rather than engage in any of the smaller skirmishes here(which I guess I might resurrect). So if you want to snipe me based on that, feel free and snipe away.

First of all, I intend to defend feminism, but because I’m such a bleeding heart compromise maker, I suppose I’ll just make everyone angry. So, as a male feminist and at least a struggling rational thinker(meaning I try to admit when I’m making mistakes, though don’t anyone get their hopes up), I’ll first of all say I recognize the general sentiment expressed by the OP and his “party” although things seemed to go to that bad internet argument place where people are just slapping away at their keyboards and everybody is citing assorted texts from everywhere and everyone is accused of making fallacies while evolution proves something or other.

Many feminist organizations have reached political power and in such situations, power seems to make people defend their and their affiliate groups particular interest over the interest of the society in general. In that they act like any interest group. Also, I have for a long time disliked the more vocal brands of feminism in academica especially, where they seem to be overtly post-modern and anti-science, in their preference for social constructivism in the stronger sense. This seems to focus tha attention on these perceived irrational man-haters, who ignore the double-standards which make life difficult for men too. And as someone has already commented, there is feministically inspired men’s studies studying the effext of our society’s dysfunctions on the male population. I feel this is very like that whole situation in the academical left, which triggered that Alan Sokal affair.

Even if it seems that contemporary mainstream feminism is wrong, I don’t feel that that is a reason to, as it were, throw the baby away with the dishwater. Rather the more reasonable views should be encouraged and even created if they do not exist. For example, womanism is a brand of feminism, which focuses more on non-white women’s experiences. I don’t appreciate Judith Butler very much, but she has made the excellent point that feminism today should focus more on the particular contexts of different women and the class or ethnicity they belong to, rather than try to focus on womanhood as such. Contemporary feminism might seem prudish and sex-negative, and for some feminists this would be correct, but for example Lisa Hartley, whom some may be familiar with, identifies herself as a feminist and she does seem to like both sex and men.

There were a few socialists expressing their dismay with contemporary feminism, and it should be noted that historically feminism has been closely affiliated with the socialist agenda; class repression and repression based on gender, sexuality and ethnicity do share many issues. By grouping all feminism under some stereotypical feminazi category is rather same as grouping all socialism as stalinism or maoism or communism, which is also done.

It might be argued that since feminism has reached its goal, it should be ended, but I do not think that that is entirely correct, although significant progress has benn made. For one the whole wage issue is still there and it should not be ignored or handwaved with cross gender generalizations. And there are the other glass ceilings or restrictions based on some alleged differences claimed here in this discussion and elsewhere. I’m moved to quote J. S. Mill, which I think show the contradictory nature of such arguments from nature:

“The anxiety of mankind to intervene on behalf of nature…is an altogether unnecessary solicitude. What women by nature cannot do, is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing.”

The double standards, for example the male draft, are caused by the same gendered prejudices as female disenfranchiment. Men’s rights and women’s rights should not be seen as contradictory, because in an unjust situation people of both genders suffer. If contemporary feminism seems against this, it should be objected to, but not by denying the whole feministic way of thought. Isn’t the whole problem with men suffering from violence and homelessness and other things which are not cared a bout a perfect example of where this sort of men are tough and manly and crap, thinking leads to?

This rant is getting rather long, but in constricted form, the mistakes of contemporary feminism are not symptomatic of the whole effort and it still has value in our society, even if in a more cultural context rather than legal. If something is wrong with it, it is more constructive to try to fix it rather than build false contradictions and seek to destroy. That’s politics right?

As an end note, the whole discussion about how “men” can take back rights from women rather underlines the whole issue. With that sort of thinking, there surely is need for feministic thinking. So let me make myself clear to you bups of some vague brotherhood: The moment you come by trying to take rights away from my sister, my mother, my wife, daughter or friends, you’ll see how much shared experience of testicles really matter. I’ll try my best to take you down. And I know many people(men :p) would agree with me.

And another thing, I’ll always first be an egalitarist or a humanist, but I just don’t see the contradiction to feminism as a whole.

149

Of course, nobody has said any such thing.

The point of contention is whether people are rightfully responsible for their own drunken decisions. Whether one can decide or “consent” to something because one is drunk, and then later claim to have not “really” made the decision.

“I said yes, but I was drunk, so it was really rape.” I agree with Stoid: allowing that argument (while prosecuting drunk driving, albeit weakly) is logically inconsistent, and also demeaning to women.

150

I might be wrong, but aren’t there some restrictions on what you can agree to, if you’re obviously intoxicated. I mean giving right of attorney or donating all your money to someone when you’re absolutely wasted would not hold up in court. I don’t know whether that’s relevant though.

151

Yes. The law doesn’t fully subscribe to either reasoning (that people are responsible for their actions, or that intoxication obviates responsibility), but I’m speaking of a more consistent moral judgment.

If I were drafting a contract (or operating a tattoo parlor, whatever) as a matter of prudence and consideration I wouldn’t work with someone who was drunk; I’d advise them to sober up and think it over. But as a moral judgment (and, were it up to me, a legal one), I think people are responsible for what they do. If you do something drunk you wouldn’t have done otherwise, that doesn’t change. You chose to drink, too.

152

I find it hard to argue against that reasoning. Although in some restricted cases you could perhaps reason, that there should be legal restrictions on how much one should be able to take advantage of a person in such a sorry state. Even if its their own fault getting there. I think the rape thing is an example, even if it is next to impossible to prove without some sort of, I don’t know witnesses or recordings or whatnot. I suppose in a tattoo parlors’s case such restrictions would start to eat into some parlor’s profits. In port cities for example.

153

But where is the line?

Another aspect of this is the issue of the “rapist” ALSO being drunk! Which I would venture to say is true, oh… 100% of the time. And I exaggerate only a little. Rarely is it only her drinking while he’s stone cold sober. So the portrayal of sex between an intoxicated man and an intoxicated woman as rape is so insulting I want to scream! It turns women into children: “stealth” misogyny, because it looks so much like respect and care and love for women to “protect” our delicate little flowery selves from big, bad, evil men with weapons hanging between their legs that we would NEVER agree to be speared by if we were in our right minds! [faints delicately at the mere idea]

154

There’s a lot that needs to be unpacked here, but yes, Stoid said any such thing. If what you’re saying is that no person can be raped as long as they’re conscious - no matter how drunk - and they “let” sex occur, where “let” means not actually objecting, then that’s what you’re saying too, by definition, because rape is a legal definition, and you’re saying it should be changed to make things that are currently rape into not rape. The point of contention was that Stoid claimed

And that isn’t true. It’s an imaginary distinction, and if it’s going to be the basis for a claim about what actual rape statistics mean – or about anything in the real world, frankly – then it needs to be made clear that that just isn’t how that works. It gets even more difficult because of the way we’re slipping in and out of legalese – you say “decide or ‘consent’” as if the entire crux of the conversation isn’t determining what that “consent” is, and what exactly we mean when we say she “decided” something while intoxicated.

Stoid offered the scenario where there’s a morning-after change of heart after consensual sex under the influence. That’s a scenario where no rape occurred, because we’re just declaring that consent took place. That doesn’t mean that once we’ve addressed that scenario we’ve solved the problem of intoxication and consent to sex. It just means that sometimes, rapes don’t occur, which: right. Nobody in this thread, so far as I can tell, disagrees in any sense that in that scenario, nobody should go to jail. That’s not a decisive or, I would argue, even a productive way of talking about rape, since the very first assumption was that a rape didn’t happen (and the necessary corollary was that the ‘victim’ is a liar). It’s like one person is trying to talk about fire prevention techniques, and somebody else says well, what about what somebody burns down their own house to defraud the insurance company? Well, they’re bad, sure… but what about the conversation about actual fires? They happen too. It’s distracting at best and poisonous to the entire discussion at worst.

I think it’s absolutely worth pointing out and being pedantic about the fact that Stoid provided that narrative description of the “shitfaced” woman who “makes a decision” and then has to try to save face and escape the consequences. That is rhetoric that can barely stay on the screen, baggage-laden as it is. It is not the only way to talk about this problem in an (~) academic setting. We could ask, instead, about a he-said she-said scenario where the only acknowledged facts are that she was drunk, that they had sex, and that she says she never wanted/consented/participated in any intercourse. Suddenly, the questions of what consent is, what it isn’t, and what the most productive legal approach might be to such a complex situation aren’t so easy to get indignant about. It is a product of the particular framing of the conversation that what we do instead is get progressively more frustrated about how obviously morally repugnant it is to let her get away with that! Except she was created precisely to be a hypothetical non-victim; she was created to be the wrongdoer. We weren’t talking about her. She is not the standard-bearer for a woman who alleges that she was taken advantage of while intoxicated. While comparing her, morally, to a drunk driver might be satisfying, comparing every alleged rape victim to the same is just a horrible mistake.

(And, to get briefly back to the point of the thread in general, I’d say these are the battles that require a dedicated feminist movement to push back a little bit. In two or three moves at most, a conversation can go from a general statement that rape is a common problem to heavily dramatized comparisons of rape victims to people blowing their life savings in Vegas – genitals as poker chips. There’s a definite semantic war being waged there, and I think it’s extremely shortsighted to suggest that such a war is ever won and resolved. Why this particular conversation when everything is entirely in the abstract?)

edit:

[QUOTE=spark240]
Yes. The law doesn’t fully subscribe to either reasoning (that people are responsible for their actions, or that intoxication obviates responsibility), but I’m speaking of a more consistent moral judgment.

If I were drafting a contract (or operating a tattoo parlor, whatever) as a matter of prudence and consideration I wouldn’t work with someone who was drunk; I’d advise them to sober up and think it over. But as a moral judgment (and, were it up to me, a legal one), I think people are responsible for what they do. If you do something drunk you wouldn’t have done otherwise, that doesn’t change. You chose to drink, too.
[/QUOTE]

And that’s fair enough. The question is, what has a person “done” if another person has sex with him/her while s/he’s drunk? Not necessarily anything, right?

155

I don’t really follow your reasoning here, although I do recognize the sarcasm and hyperbole. I’ll just check some stuff. First, surely it is not right to hurt anyone, whether they are drunk or not. I mean surely we can agree that even if a person risks oneself by willful overinebriation, hurting said person is not really ok? So following from that, a person who drives drunk or violates a person while under the influence is surely a separate matter from someone who is an easy victim because they are drunk? If we follow this line of reasoning, it might be said, that a person who does stupid things to themselves while drunk, or who are robbed or raped, might have been a cause to that violation to occur, but it does not follow, that abusing someone is okay, because they are drunk.

So where to draw a line? Well, that is why we have a legal system with strict procedures and focus on proof and such. If both are drunk, and there is no other evidence, it would of course be impossible to talk whether it was rape or not, but forming the law or even our attitude about it to just give a carte blanche approval for such situations is not very good, all things considered. What I mean is, that deciding on it is always rape is probably misguided since information is scarce, but deciding that it never is very wrong too, because surely a rape could happen. Thus, there should not be a categorical approach to such a special circumstance(and I mean that there is no other evidence and both claim not to remember because of too much drink, I have no idea how usual this sort of thing is. But if it is usual, I only have one thing to say: amateurs).

156

It’s a pity this thread has degenerated into a rape thread, as so often happens with discussions of feminism.

For the post which has reawakened the thread, Zamander, what you haven’t done is actually provide a reason for continuing support of feminism, or to reconcile the aims of egalitarianism, which proposes equality, with a feminist movement which seeks to advance one set of people at the expense of another, equality be damned.

157

Yes, it was somewhat of a rambling post. First, I do agree with your main point that in the US at least, things are skewed out of balance and double standards affecting men aren’t getting enouh attention. I do agree that how feminism appears, is more of an interest group rather than anythng else.

But I would claim, that feminism should not be restricted by those you disagree with. For example, while I dislike the post-modernist tendencies of a Judith Butler, I do respect Martha Nussbaum for example. And as I said before, Lisa Hartley is another example of a feminist that does not fit into the social injustices which you, for example, specified. Wrong ideas should be objected to, but I find it suspect to judge a whole intellectual movement based on that.

You expressed the opinion, that feminism does not have anything to do anymore and has turned into a movement that fights only for women’s rights. I disagree on two counts. In my opinion, feminism is not necessarily against egalitarism and surely it has not been historically so, so I find your postion on that a false dichotomy. For example, to make a comparison, there was a time when leftist ideals were i the mainstream and intellectually almost wholly associated with Stalinism, or Soviet style communism. Many who disagreed with this might have argued, that socialism as it is should not in any ways be supported any more. As it were, a mixed economy with Keynesian economics and a steady economical growth proved that the whole idea of elites and class warfare was outdated. But that would not be a fair assessment, because there are many ways of being socialist, even without accepting Marx(Some would describe anarchists as socialists for example). While it may be true, that all the “good” feminists should start calling themselves egalitarists or gender mixer-uppers or whatever, I do not see why a person who identifies oneself as feminist would need to do so, essentially let other people decide what is the way their thinking is called, or what is real feminism. Furthermore, I find your use of the term support a bit weird as well. Why would anyone support thinking they do not agree to? And why do you insist on treating feminism as some sort of monolith, when it is an intellectual movement, susceptible to change and consisting of many individuals raher than being a single individual to be judged. The rational thing to do is to try to change it by discussion and other civilized venues, so we might someday see mainstream feminism that is not so disagreeable(if it so decidedly is). I would say that using the term feminism in such a blanket way is actually a wrong way to go about it, since as said, it is large field with many differing views.

Secondly, it is not like there are absolutely nothing to do anymore as it regards to women’s or men’s rights. The double standards are a creation of gender roles in our society and as it has been mentioned, feminism has called these implicit roles of masculinity and femininity which are not set in stone but rather contingent on the context or historical situation. And the term egalitarism does not really go there at all. I suppose you could say gender studies, but still, this seems not necessary to forcibly change as if the word feminism in itself has somehow become evil incarnate. If there is some foolish person who calls oneself a feminist and thinks that men are failed abortions or that women simply do not abuse men in relationships or that if they do its the mans fault and hey you can’t hurt the monsters anyways, that person is simply mistaken, wrong and somewhat stupid, like anyone expressing any viewpoint might be, so I do not think feminism should take the blame there.

Like the Beatles said, take a bad song and make it better, in the end it does not matter whether we call it feminism or egalitarism, what matters is that it’s done right and when it’s done right there is no reason to stop supporting anything. Unlike, for example national socialism, I do not think feminism as an idea is implicitly wrong or evil and we can all hope for the day when it is merely a phase of our intellectual and political history. I do not think we are quite there yet and contemporary feminism has its significant problems, the correction of which might help orientate the whole movement towards egalitarianism, which overlaps with feminism, but does not necessarily have to envelope it.

It may be that this is still not showing why we should continue to support feminism and I did not mean to defend the the discontents you described or try to sweep them under the rug. Perhaps it is merely that I do not see the issue in such confrontational terms, or agree to your definition of it. Another comparison: While evolution is of course a natural law and therefore not a perfect analogy, it can still be used to support bad policies, for example eugenics(if you do not agree with eugenics is not bad, it is an example, bear with me). But those bad ideas do not reduce from the good thinking behind evolution as such. And while feminism is of course not as empirically defensible, I think it still deserves a more constructive approach, if we are ever to reach a meaningful solution to these issues.

158

If you speak of humanism as being superior to feminism the raepists win.

159

Why would anyone call themselves feminist if feminism can’t be defined by the policies brought about by its adherents, the works and words of its leaders and so on? You might as well say we shouldn’t say the Ku Klux Klan is a bad organisation, because we could do better by working with it. No point in throwing out the baby with the bath water, better to try and change the Klan, if we disagree with some of it’s members, through persuasion.

Or, we could just say that they seek to benefit one race and harm another, or sex in the case of feminism, and that we don’t agree with that.

Oh, “feminism” has, has it? I thought feminism wasn’t monolithic, no generalisations could be made about it, etc..

So your position is that we should let the tawdry business of what feminists get up to sully the good name of feminism, which exists independent of feminists as an abstract?

Which rather raises the question: why call it feminism, then?

If females constitute a privileged class, as is certainly the case, how can a movement aimed at their further advancement ever cause movement towards egalitarianism?

It is appropriate to compare to Nazism though, as a movement based on causing harm to people based on the group into which they were born.

160

Half price drinks from 7-9 every other Friday.