I said feminists talk about these things. They do. I’m a feminist and I talk about these things (in threads where the OP participates, no less). I’ve talked to other feminists about these things. I’ve read other feminists writing about these things. The OP has seen links about these things. His claims, therefore, that feminism isn’t about equality because feminists don’t talk about these issues is inaccurate. It’s also plain goofy to pick some topics, claim that these and only these topics prove an interest in equality, and close your mind to any other conversation.
Are these particular topics a priority? For some feminists, yes. For others, no. They are a priority for me because I see both women and men impacted negatively by the notion that women are frail caregivers who are utterly child-centric and so fragile while men are big brutes who can’t be trusted with children and who must be civilized by delicate female sensibilities.
As with all large groups, its easier to get feminists to talk about hot, fun topics than dull, boring ones. So you talk about outrages in pop culture rather than academic studies. Christian writers spend more column inches talking about SSM than about the Eucharist, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t interested in theology. It means that talking about hard subjects is harder and requires more research and more dedication than firing off some easy blog post about an anime character’s nipples.
And the readership for the pop culture ephemera will be higher. Just as it’s more fun to write about the hot topic, it’s more fun to read as well. And I can read dozens of goofy articles in the time I can read one academic study.
One of the basic rules of patriarchy is: “don’t hit women”.
If you violate that rule, you should expect society to come down on you. Because patriarchy applies to men (but not women).
But you raise a good point. What at least some scholars have found, is that the single most likely indicator of male-on-female violence, in relationships, is when a woman hits a man first. Men are brought up on “don’t hit women”. (The reverse, of course, is not true: the unfortunate result is that at least some women seem to think they’re allowed to hit their husbands/boyfriends without getting hit back.) It is possible the single most effective way to reduce domestic violence would be to teach women not to hit their husbands or boyfriends, just because they’re pissed.
That, of course, is something feminists don’t want to hear.
That is a good question too. Unfortunately, it’s not what this thread is about.
I will say this, though, (at the risk of derailing my own thread): the single biggest policy change that I’d personally like to see is making 50/50 custody arrangements the default policy in divorce courts. “Default” meaning: unless there’s some good reason to do otherwise.
Having two equally involved parents is the best possible outcome for children after a divorce. Relegating one parent to second-class status is a horrible outcome for children.
…oh come on now, surely you are just taking the piss now aren’t you? Is this a parody thread?
This is an objective claim. I’m a feminist, and I most certainly am not against it (assuming, of course, that both parents are suitable to be parents.) There are plenty of feminists in this thread and I’m pretty sure they will tell you the same thing.
Your claim that feminists are against what you said is demonstrably false.
That’s another good question. I’m sure there is a middle ground. To me, the process starts with debunking feminism in its modern form. I think that men and women are meant to be complementary (in the evolutionary sense, not the religious sense). Putting men and women at war with each other is a horrible outcome, for everyone, in my opinion. That doesn’t mean I’m advocating going back to the 1950’s. That would be ridiculous. It does mean exposing feminism for what it is: a movement for giving women as much power and as many privileges as possible, while avoiding responsibility and accountability. That’s simply a outcome that’s never going to work.
Not exactly, the basic rule is “don’t hit women that don’t belong to you.” Patriarchy has a long tradition of wife beating/murder and daughter/murder beating (especially over the issue of sexual behavior).
This might well be true inside your head. But I would seriously question whether it’s true anywhere else.
If a scientifically-respectable poll by a well-regarded polling firm were to ask, say, 1,000 self-avowed feminists whether they see “modern feminism” as being what you claim it is, I think it would be unwise to bet on the affirmative.
It’s the same rhetoric that is used against any other group trying to bring about equality. Oh, you don’t want to end discrimination against LGBTQ people. You just want special rights. Oh, you don’t want to end racial discrimination. You’re so lucky to be black. Oh, you don’t want to end religious discrimination. You just want to persecute Christians.
Over and over and over and over. This particular OP has apparently decided that 2015 is the year of the complaint about feminism. We’re just lucky he’s decided that the dope is the perfect spot for it.
I would actually love to see a poll like that because I honestly have no idea what the results would be. The whacko feminists, especially the academic ones, get most of the press. I really don’t know what the ratio of whacko to moderate feminists is. Most women reject the label for themselves for the same reason that I do even if they support parts of the message and the legacy importance of the earlier waves. That is a problem on its own but it is only one of several. Feminism has many different branches that often have infighting among themselves and sometimes completely contradict one another (personal freedom of choice versus mandated female security are a common theme in many of the conflicts).
‘Big tent’ labels like that are not marketable to the mainstream especially when you don’t get much useful information when someone says that they are a ‘feminist’. It could mean anything from supporting basic human rights of women in oppressed societies to the idea that women should dominate public affairs). It only serves as a vapid logo, not as a coherent philosophical or political message and that is a real problem, not just for feminism, but for any movement or message that has been co-opted by many very different groups for their own purposes.
The last thing that comes to mind when I think of feminism is overall equality. It may be a media driven creation but the vast majority of the news stories I read about it from both liberal and conservative sources lead me to believe it is now a reactionary campaign whose main tactic is disseminating misleading or blatantly false information and statistics to as many people as possible to further their agenda. That is bad enough when someone like Rush Limbaugh uses the same set of tactics for personal gain but it is unforgivable (and I would argue fireable) when it is allowed within universities whose main purpose is supposed to combat disinformation from all sources.
To be fair, I don’t have a problem with fair and balanced feminism like jsgoddess promotes and articulates well. If all feminists were like her, I could find a way to ignore the name and jump on board. However, in my experience, most ‘self-avowed feminists’ are not like her and you have no idea what they really believe just from the label alone. Most women stay away from the label completely because they have also encountered a few too many of the nutty ones and some of them have ironically, been victimized by them too. This is a left of center board. In the wild, the mainstream support for feminism as a label isn’t nearly as strong as it is here even among women. Many of the individual ideas are but not the way the movement has fractured and become more divisive than inclusive. I don’t encounter any backlash among the strong women that I am close to when I say I am not a feminist. They aren’t either.
Yeah, but she’s not a child, though: she’s a grown woman. Punching someone who’s bigger and stronger than you, in the face, is a really stupid thing to do. If she’d been a man, who happened to be short and weak, nobody would have a problem with it. They’d say: “Well, that’s why you don’t punch someone in the face who’s twice as big as you.”
And frankly, if he’d been a man, he probably wouldn’t have done it in the first place: because it’s such incredibly stupid thing to do.
And look, I don’t have a dog in the fight: I think they were both acting incredibly stupid. She shouldn’t have hit him, and he shouldn’t have hit her back. There’s no law that says, “you get to hit someone, because they hit you first.” There is self-defense, but that’s an entirely different concept than “getting back” at someone. And what he did didn’t look like self-defense to me.
I wasn’t there, I only saw the linked clip, and - like I said, I think they were both acting like idiots.
But what I take away from it, is that she thought she could get away with hitting someone twice her size, because she was a woman. A man her size would never think that, and nobody would have any sympathy for him if he did.
Anyway, I think it would be better if women stopped thinking it’s ok to hit a man if you’re a woman. It’s a really really dumb thing to think.
Well, all people with axes to grind want to feel justified in their grinding. Thus we often see, here, lists of “reasons” for resenting one particular group or another (such as you mention here). It makes it all seem so Logical and Rational!..at least in the minds of the thread-originators. To the reader, some of these threads appear rather transparently as the shrieks of the toddler, denied his (or her!) expected privileges and prerogatives.
But, yeah: it’s an old tactic (to claim that Those People Expect Special Treatment). Another: to claim that “most” members of a group would never identify with those asking for equality, as here:
No doubt there were plenty of white people in the 60s averring that reasonable *coloreds didn’t have anything to do with that Civil Rights radicalism!..*and the like. Same basic thing.
Another commonly-seen tactic: to claim that the drive for equality is all-effed-up due to Crazy Proponents of Equality who just Can’t Get Their Shit Together, as here:
But when the tactics descend to claims that it’s An Outrage! that Kate Winslet got the raft while Leo DiCaprio drowned…then you have some special brand of desperation on your hands. :rolleyes:
The problem is, feminism means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To most people “feminism” means promoting equality and egalitarianism between the sexes: equal pay for equal work, equal educational opportunity, and and end to some of the very unfair practices that have characterized western society in the past (and still characterize it to some extent) and which are still common in the Third World.
But the leadership of the feminist movement has gone haring off into territory that most people aren’t really interested in: things like the microaggression cited already, the characterization of men generally as rapists or potential rapists just waiting for their chance, and they also persecute prostitutes and their customers relentlessly, and they’re also against pornography, even though it’s been demonstrated to reduce the frequency of that other thing they hate, rape.
The obvious answer is to make a distinction between the feminists who are looking for equality and the ones who are trying to make all men out to be rapists and so forth, which is, sadly, the movement feminists.
There are still some areas were the equality feminists need to make progress: the role of home-maker, a very useful and important one for society, is still uncompensated. Child care for working women remains a difficult problem. Political representation at all levels, especially Congress, remains unbalanced. The glass ceiling is still intact. This is where feminists could make lives better for the majority of women (and men as well, by extension).
I think the movement feminists are discrediting feminism generally via their activities. Both the men’s rights activists and the movement feminists seem to have forgotten that men and women very often love each other, that fathers often want the best for their wives and daughters, and that mothers often want the best for their husbands and sons. Which is perhaps why both groups are not particularly popular.
Apparently you don’t see that, but I know of many feminists who are concerned about these things. Most feminists that I’ve read or heard from recognize that patriarchal culture is harmful to men as well as women.
So no, I don’t accept these generalizations, and I don’t think your characterization of feminism is accurate beyond some fringe that doesn’t represent most feminists.
I hate statements like “most women”, (most women are not even feminists) but unfortunately, I do see a lot of that.
And the bigger picture is that the grungy, dirty, hard, back-breaking, dangerous work that millions of men do is not work they do because they want to, it’s because they have to. There’s no line of women waiting to get into that kind of work. And it’s exactly that work that makes the lives of NY socialite bloggers who complain about a shirt a man was wearing after landing a probe on a comet possible in the first place. Instead of doing anything hard or dangerous themselves, they sit in the lap of luxury, trying to think of new things to complain about.
The same feminists who would be, btw, outraged if any man made any comment about the clothes a woman was wearing.