So you’re basically asserting an absolute right to bust up feminist discussions because of some clear and present danger to yourself. Interesting. And you wonder why they’re hostile to the presence of outsiders?
You should see what that thread has turned into now.
and
this…
http://www.msmagazine.com/cgi-local/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=14;t=001398;p=6
…is one good example. The conflict in the thread is over a contradiction: between a woman’s assertion that because she was raped and because she knows people who were raped where the rapist was never charged there is a systemic problem where rapists go free (the reasons are never discussed, except for blaming it on the all-encompassing “patriarchy”, a great word which signifies nothing), and a man’s argument that these sorts of cases are exaggerated and that there are legal avenues available.
In the “discussion” style advocated earlier, this conflict can never really be resolved except through namecalling of whoever holds the unpopular opinion. Here, of course, someone would bring up the question of whether there really is a systemic problem, and people would no doubt start delving through statistics, eventually producing something akin to an answer (or multiple answers). Since PERSONAL ANECDOTES AND EXPERIENCES PROVE ABSOLUTELY NOTHING ABOUT SOCIETY AS A WHOLE* (something the ms. people obviously don’t understand), they never get to that stage because they assume their own experiences are universal.
An example by ConnieB over there:
Both statements are invalid as statements of society as a whole. The first, of course, because other women may have had entirely different experiences, but are simply not present in the discussion or don’t feel willing to discuss it. The second, because differences in geography, culture, situation and history may mean that the experiences don’t truly reflect the actual situation, and “volunteers” often don’t get the full picture about what’s actually going on. Yet because of these experiences, Connie assumes that there is a widespread and systemic problem. The normal way to check that is by the use of contradictory examples or, ultimately, through reasoning and statistics. Both of the latter tactics are as open to men as they are to women. The argument is invalid, but sounds good.
*Ok, actually you can use the experiences of groups of people in geographically concentrated settings to prove or disprove something: that’s what ethnography does. That’s real research, though, not web board wankery. Ethnographic study might actually shed some light.
Because though I’m often loathe to say so in public due to the extreme negative reaction the word conjures up, I am a feminist.
I believe that all people deserve equal treatment under the law, equal pay for equal work, and that there should be a mutual respect of each gender by each gender.
But instead what I’m getting is that if I don’t subscribe to the dogma that the patriarchy rules my life and that I’m a victim, then I’m not a feminist and not interested in feminism.
The poster I responded to when I said that had just commented twice to a man that because he has a penis he’s unworthy of communicating in any forum that discusses feminist issues. So, if you want to take it out of context, go right ahead. But I want to know if she really is that hostile to everyone in possession of a penis.
Snicker. Well, fuck, I don’t exactly see how that fits into my argument, nor that there any “clear and present danger to myself” here except through the promulgation of nonsensical comments. I’m questioning the validity of “feminist discussions” as anything even approaching reasoned exploration of a topic. From the lameness of the response, it looks like I’ve done a fairly good job of it.
Come back when you actually want to address my comments instead of erecting pointless strawmen. If you can’t think of anything real to comment on, you might want to try attacking my slight overuse of the word “ludicrous”. Better than inventing it out of whole cloth.
So you’re saying that they should be grateful to the Dopers who pointed out the lack of intellectual rigor in their discussion?
Although I’m with the Dopers on the subject at hand, I agree with mrblue92 and hansel. Y’all should be ashamed of yourselves for acting the way you did, and I think you’re incredibly naive to act all affronted about how you were treated. What did you expect?
It doesn’t matter if you’re right or better at reasoned debate, you just invaded another message board. You are trolls. Intellectual trolls, but trolls just the same. Instead of specious arguments, you had specious intent… whatever legitmate concerns y’all have about feminism, what this was really about was patting yourselves on the back for being a Doper and not somebody on one of those other, lesser internet forums.
You could have started a GD thread on the subject (like reprise did) and invited the Ms. forum members to participate in it. You could have registered at those forums, spent a month or two getting a feel for the place and its people and then started a thread on the subject there. But no, patience and etiquette are for other, lesser denizens of the net. You’re badass Dopers, and you wanted to crash the party instead.
-fh
Who said they were having a reasoned exploration of the topic?
My point was that the hostility received by Dopers was predictable, and avoidable. Your opinions on the validity of feminist consciousness raising are irrelevant.
I’m not going to defend feminist consciousness-raising. It has a particular purpose that’s useful in some circumstances, and not useful in others. How do you translate “I think that they’re discussions aren’t helpful” to “they shouldn’t have a hostile reaction when a bunch of people from another message board come over to tell them they’re all wrong?”
Ooh! I forgot the “is” between “there” and “any” in my last post. You can use that, if you want. It will no doubt improve your credibility as much as that silly-ass “clear and present danger” stuff.
catsix, not all feminists think this way, of course. Radical feminists blame practically everything that women go through on “the patriarchy”, which is a useful but essentially meaningless concept because it merely asserts that men are dominant in society and doesn’t explore any real level of complexity (or other factors) beyond that. Kinda like the Marxists who believe that women’s problems are due to class conflict, everybody wants to reduce things to a simple explanation.
Sometimes I think the biggest reason why economists are the only social scientists that get any respect is because they have to at least build models for what they assert, and the half-assed asserted stuff breaks down pretty quickly once the math gets involved. The other social sciences (including the pseudo-sociology and -political science that these people ascribe to) keep on getting pulled down these pointless blind alleys.
Not only does it assert that men are dominant, it contributes to the “dominance” of men by continuing to prepetuate the idea and causing those who believe it to labor under it.
There is still sexism, but the systematic belief that all women are victims of the patriarchy, and the idea that the patriarchy will never be gone, is subjugating women. You have to believe you can climb out of a hole before you can climb out of a hole. If you believe you will always be at the bottom of it, then there you will remain.
I agree with this.
However, it was more than just predictable and avoidable: it was unnecessary and wrong. Yes, it was pretty obvious that such a thing would happen. It is, to me, just as obvious that such a thing should not have happened and that it reflects badly on those few Msers who inflicted it.
hansel, last I checked, you said “I have to side with them on this one”, which implies that you believe that they were right to react with such hostility, not merely that it’s predictable. They have been asserting (and are continuing to assert) the superiority of their beliefs and the invalidity of catsix, Guin, and especially Daniel’s own experiences. You also implied that this sort of discussion shouldn’t be subject to contradiction by saying that the dopers coming in were “wrong to do it”. Therefore, my points about the utter uselessness and frivolity of the exercise are valid, and that their pretensions of superiority are not.
No, the dopers are not “trolls”. Disagreement with the assertions made in the OP is not “trolling”. Calling it that just shows ignorance of the term. Catsix may arguably have acted badly, which I addressed, but it was Daniel that received the lion’s share of the scorn for no good reason. As we saw from his earlier post showing the warm response to a different, more agreeable man, his gender has absolutely nothing to do with it. His not agreeing with the party line, on the other hand, had everything to do with it.
So what exactly is the point and usefulness of feminist “consciousness-raising” if it isn’t a reasoned exploration? The point of the straight dope is fighting ignorance. Well, I can’t think of anything that builds ignorance more than the kind of exercise that you just described. Does this threaten me personally? Only indirectly. Does this mean that this sort of “discussion” is naturally superior and that those who wish to engage the topic at hand without necessarily agreeing with it, as the people on the other board have continually implied with their hostile exclusive reaction? Hell no.
I’ll comment on something you said earlier, because it actually appears to be the crux of what you’re saying.
I already mentioned this earlier:
You didn’t quote all of it, but I’d like to explicitly link the two. They weren’t merely discussing their experiences, they were creating hypotheses on the nature of society and gender relations based on those experiences. The experiences are one thing: they should be taken as they are, and on that I’ll definitely agree. The creation of these hypotheses is a far different matter. Remember, it was the unchallenged hypothesis that “women are forced to have ‘pornstar orgasms’ by the patriarchy” that catsix was originally responding to, and it’s this building of unchallenged hypotheses that I was discussing in my earlier comments.
Discussing experiences is fine. Great. Go for it. If that’s all they were doing, then the Dopers would have been entirely out of line. That wasn’t what was going on. Generalize those experiences, and you’re engaging in that “amateurish sociology” I mentioned earlier. Responding to that is perfectly legitimate. It doesn’t dispute the validity of the experiences, but of the conclusions. Personally, I’m all for that.
(By the way, that “stream of feminist discourse and scholarship” about how rational discussion keeps them down is proof only that feminists can not or will not engage those who disagree with them. It’s kind of like the pathetic Marxists who dismiss the legitimate critiques of economists by calling them “tools of the ruling class”. If one makes hypotheses, one has to be prepared to be proven wrong. If this “stream of feminist discourse” was even remotely legitimate, it’d be too busy trying to disprove its own hypotheses to require others to do it instead. I know you don’t advocate it, but it goes back to that whole “the dopers shouldn’t have contradicted the MSers” bit)
Blackknight: Aptly put. Not only wrong, but deeply ignorant.
Disagreement with the assertions made in the OP is trolling if you’re more interested in showing off than sincerely debating the assertions, and that is what I think is happening here.
Like I said, specious intent is just as much trolling as specious arguments are. Being right does not give anybody a free pass to barge into any conversation at any time. All conversations have context and all communities have etiquette. If you blow these things off, as catsix and the rest did most blatantly, you are a troll.
Look it up in the Jargon File if you want to quibble about definitions, but whether it’s technically trolling or flame-bait, it’s still shameful behavior, especially when done in the name of the SDMB.
-fh
In understanding the purpose of their forums, which is significantly of the sort of feminist consciousness-raising you’re dismissing, I do side with them that the Dopers who intruded and tried to raise the discussion to the level of “civil, productive discourse” shouldn’t have done so. It’s always better if things are kept polite and friendly, but when you walk into someone’s house and tell them off, don’t expect congratulations, even if you deserve it.
I do not uncritically support all the assertions in that thread, but I can appreciate the sentiment that motivates some of those with whom I disagree.
When you step into a thread on feminism and ask how many are man-haters, as Catsix did, or suggest they get therapy, as Guin did, or call them the Stepford Feminists, as Daniel did, then you can’t blame them for invalidating you. I recognize that all three dopers went there with good intentions of getting involved in a debate that interested them; I further recognize that their questions were usually well-intentioned, as was Guin’s therapy suggestion. But they did what Dopers criticize newbies here for doing: barging in without learning the culture and the conversation.
Different culture, different rules, so act differently. What’s so hard about that?
His gender has everything to do with it: he was a man walking into a discussion of how women perceive themselves, and act out their sexuality, in light of degrading and controlling media portrayals that suggest they should act a certain way. He hasn’t had the same experiences they had that led them to the conclusions they reached, so his analysis of their conclusions was of limited usefulness at best, and at worst, trivialized the experiences of the Ms. posters with whom he disagreed.
They’re not the Straight Dope. And the entailments of their definition of ignorance are far different from yours.
The point of feminist consciousness-raising is, first of all, to give those who want it an uncritical atmosphere to express themselves, when they’re constantly surrounded by an atmosphere that dictates to them that they’re not allowed to express themselves. It’s also to allow the participants to experience an atmosphere in which they are justified in speaking about their experiences in their own voices, when they’re typically raised in an atmosphere that instructs on how to feel about their experiences. So no, a feminist conscious-raising does not have as its primary purpose “reasoned exploration”, especially when reasoned exploration is the watchward of the class on whom they’re blaming their problems. I’m all for reasoned exploration, and think it’s probably the best mode of discourse around. But I can see that when a group of people think that reasoned exploration is suspect, the least useful thing to do is tell them that they’re failing the tests of reasoned exploration, and need to shape up.
The White Man’s burden is heavy, isn’t it?
Again, you’re asserting a right, hell, a duty, it sounds like, to correct them. I imagine that that feels to them about the same way as it feels here when some fundie stops by to correct our athiestic delusions.
I won’t deny that there are feminists who have used this assertion as a blanket defense against criticism. But they do have a point: what the hell business does a man have making suggestions to women about their subjective experiences of their own orgasms, or the conclusions they draw from such? They weren’t engaging Dopers with their conclusions; they didn’t come here to inform us all about what they’d established. The Dopers went to them to tell them how wrong they are.
What did we expect? A cake?
I think this kind of sums up what I’m getting at. The italics are mine.
racinchikki wrote:
Good choice of words here. 
It is not “someone’s house”; it is a public forum which ostensibly allows differing viewpoints.
I’ve never once seen a newbie here get criticized for not knowing the culture here. I have seen them criticized for being close-minded, or failing to back up their assertions, etc.
The opinion that they are constantly surrounded by an atmosphere that dictates to them that they’re not allowed to express themselves is no different from any other paranoid belief, and should not be given special treatment. If I go into a conspiracy theory chat room and ask for evidence, I may expect to be treated harshly - but that does not mean the harsh treatment is warranted or should be excused or defended.
I don’t get it. If someone throws out the very idea of rational examination of ideas, why on earth should they ever expect anyone to agree with them? IMHO, if someone throws out reason they have no grounds for accusing others of not respecting their beliefs or ideas. I mean, I used to consider myself a feminist, but if that means throwing out reason and rationality, then I’m sorry. I’m not going to do it.
I personally believe that everyone has a duty to correct false ideas. Of course, this should always be done in a polite way, if possible, and always with respect to the rules of evidence and logical argumentation.
If the experiences are truly subjective, then other women would have exactly as much to say about them as a man would. Moreover, whenever conclusions are drawn from evidence, anyone with knowledge of reason has grounds to address the conclusions from that evidence.
To tell you the truth, I expected a lot worse reaction than what occurred (based on dealings with some extreme feminists in the past). However, what is expected and what should happen are often two very different things.
mmmm cake …
Who said that they threw out the principle of rational examination? They’re suspicious of it because there’s a long history of modernist scholarship that has placed women in a subordinate position to men. There’s also the fact that the educated class has traditionally been a male dominated field, and that female voices have been ignored or dismissed because they couldn’t compete on the field of debate.
Suspician of “reasoned examination” doesn’t mean they eschew logic; it means that less primacy of place is given to proof and rigorous argumentation. It means that, in general, a principal of charity is applied to the voices that are from traditionally oppressed groups when interpreting their words. It means that less emphasis is placed on Enlightenment style schemes of transcendental truths.
Suspicious of the principle of rational examination? Christ, that makes about as much sense as being “suspicious” of the law of gravity. “That there gravity, all it does is keep things down. I don’t trust it.”
What on earth is there to be suspicious of?
Although I’m still trying to understand how a sane person can be “suspicious” of a simple rule, I was with you here until you went on …
Huh?
Principle of charity means what?
Who are the oppressed groups?
How is “less emphasis” on “Enlightenment style schemes of transcendental truths” different from “eschew[ing] logic”? Sounds like a euphemism to me.
In general, whenever someone starts off with the idea that being rational is somehow bad or “suspicious”, I simply cannot take them seriously. Nor should anyone. It’s just another form of the tinfoil-hat brigade.
Well, no. But some brownies would have been nice.
I’ve been following this discussion and the Ms. Board discussion for the past few days and while I can say, like hansel and others, that I saw the train wreck coming from miles away and for that reason did not post there, that result was not due to any concerted effort by the SDMBers to derail the discussion. What caused the train wreck were the reactions of the Ms. posters who expect passive agreement when they put forth unsound opinions, mutual intellectual and emotional masturbation, and the unwillingness of the SDMBers to validate their expectations.
Hypersensitivity and animosity towards differing opinions is endemic to exclusionary group (they voted for a women only discussion of co-opting orgasms). I read many discussions in the forums on the Ms. board and witnessed a widespread willingness to lob the same type of accusations and insults at any disagreeing opinions. Dog piles are extremely common, as is a proclivity for immature namecalling and troll-alerts and “You are not a feminist - yes I am” battles.
There are two topics in the introduction forum alone warning new posters to steel themselves to name calling and flaming, leading me to believe that this behavior is not only expected, but regarded as some kind of rite of passage. While I understand the Ms. boards probably get many trolls intent on disrupting the discussion, that fact does not excuse a pervasively antagonistic environment, nor defensive suspicion toward rational divergent opinions and discourse. If anything, the SDMBers are guilty of not realizing the dynamic of that message board differs greatly from this board; that does not make that dynamic valid, however.
I guess I have been really spoiled by lurking here for so long; the behavior I witnessed from many posters at the Ms. Boards would not be tolerated at the SDMB. An environment that eschews rigorous intellectualism and excludes opposing viewpoints, especially based on gender, for petty name-calling and emotional validation is not a place I want to spend my time.