On Feminism

[LinusK]

@Evil_Economist

So you’re upset that other people don’t share your priorities, and that makes feminism bad?

I’m pretty sure you don’t share my priorities. By your rationale that makes your belief system bad, and you should apologize.

No - try to stay with me: I’m saying feminism is not about equality.

[MaxTheVool]

@LinusK

Precisely: feminism is not concerned about equality: it’s concerned with promoting the interests of its membership - privileged 1st world women.

Hey, you’re back. Can you respond to post 577 if you get a chance? Thanks

[Jack_of_Words]

@Miller

Okay, this is more sad than fun, now.

Well, I thought I ought to carefully document that you were talking out of your arse when you said my first four or so posts would have got me banned. Having proven that, you’ve neither apologised nor withdrawn your misleading and defamatory comment - rather, you’ve just added another insult.

Made-up facts and insults posing as arguments… this, dear readers, is how ‘feminists’ work.

@QuickSilver

Are interviews for these kinds of positions a matter of public record?

I ask because I’m curious as to whether anyone would even know the specific profiles of those considered for the interviews - only women, only people under 5’6", nobody over 12 stone, brunetts, Irish need not apply…?

And how do you know that nobody they interviewed prior to you wasn’t fully qualified for the job? If they found such a person, that would easily explain the perfunctory nature of your interview.

Or maybe you just come across as needlessly pedantic and overly verbose?

If you’re going to try to chip in to that part of this discussion, do make an effort to read what I have posted. The answers are available to you.

Oh, and at the risk of being ‘needlessly’ pedantic (and ‘overly’ verbose), you ask ‘how I know’ that “nobody they interviewed prior to you wasn’t fully qualified for the job?” Leaving aside that I haven’t made a claim like that, if I had I wouldn’t use the confusing construction you’ve opted for (the double negative makes it difficult to understand what you’re mistakenly claiming I’ve said). I suppose if one gets language right, and enjoys it, that would come across to some as pedantic and verbose. But I encourage you to strive to improve your language skills, for your own benefit and for others.

Ignoring available information and communicating incomprehensibly…this, dear readers, is how ‘feminists’ work.

Is it any wonder I’m an anti-feminist?

Zara Faris, speaking in this Youtube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOYJNzmfxEc is also an anti-feminist, for reasons that she articulates clearly and concisely (or perhaps pedantically, verbosely and/or ‘sadly’ depending on your tastes). I do feel slightly disloyal posting it, since she’s debating against Natalie Bennet, the UK Green Party leader (who bases her feminism on not being allowed a bicycle as a child, while her opponent addresses matters of justice, and gender…)

I’ll happily continue to engage with any of you who take the time (15 mins approx) to listen to a muslim woman explain why your ideology is wrong, and take it as read that I agree with her for the reasons she states. The rest of you can continue to play silly games and call me a poopyhead…because that, dear reader, is how ‘feminists’ work.

[QuickSilver]

@Jack_of_Words

If you’re going to try to chip in to that part of this discussion, do make an effort to read what I have posted. The answers are available to you.

Oh, and at the risk of being ‘needlessly’ pedantic (and ‘overly’ verbose), you ask ‘how I know’ that “nobody they interviewed prior to you wasn’t fully qualified for the job?” Leaving aside that I haven’t made a claim like that, if I had I wouldn’t use the confusing construction you’ve opted for (the double negative makes it difficult to understand what you’re mistakenly claiming I’ve said). I suppose if one gets language right, and enjoys it, that would come across to some as pedantic and verbose. But I encourage you to strive to improve your language skills, for your own benefit and for others.

Ignoring available information and communicating incomprehensibly…this, dear readers, is how ‘feminists’ work.

You do love the sound of your own voice. Even in print.

@Jack_of_Words

Zara Faris, speaking in this Youtube link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOYJNzmfxEc is also an anti-feminist, for reasons that she articulates clearly and concisely (or perhaps pedantically, verbosely and/or ‘sadly’ depending on your tastes). I do feel slightly disloyal posting it, since she’s debating against Natalie Bennet, the UK Green Party leader (who bases her feminism on not being allowed a bicycle as a child, while her opponent addresses matters of justice, and gender…)

I’ll happily continue to engage with any of you who take the time (15 mins approx) to listen to a muslim woman explain why your ideology is wrong, and take it as read that I agree with her for the reasons she states. The rest of you can continue to play silly games and call me a poopyhead…because that, dear reader, is how ‘feminists’ work.

I took the time. I can certainly understand why you like her so much. She has your gift of gab. To say nothing of the self-important confidence with which she delivers opinions as facts. I’d rebut but she demolishes her strawmen faster than she can build them.

…And this, dear reader, is how ‘anti-feminists’ work.

[Jack_of_Words]

@QuickSilver

You do love the sound of your own voice. Even in print.

So do my audiences. Some people appreciate fine things, others call them ‘needlessly pedantic’ and ‘overly verbose’.

@QuickSilver

I took the time. I can certainly understand why you like her so much. She has your gift of gab. To say nothing of the self-important confidence with which she delivers opinions as facts. I’d rebut but she demolishes her strawmen faster than she can build them.

You’d rebut her, but…you didn’t. Can you? I mean, can you demonstrate that you can? Pretending that you can will fly with those who have no interest in questioning their own ideology (and those who think ‘you are pedantic and verbose’ is an argument), but take a moment to show the rest of us why she’s wrong. That’s always so much more convincing than just saying she’s wrong.

@QuickSilver

…And this, dear reader, is how ‘anti-feminists’ work.

Yep. They (we) present reasoned arguments - from a woman, even. Which you, in turn, pretend to have listened to, pretend to have understood, and pretend to have adequately dismissed. And that, dear reader…

[Annadroid]

I think there are different types of feminism. Evidence suggest this to be true.

Feminism - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy

http://www.sociology.org.uk/as4i4c4.pdf

Personally, I am simply a human individual. It is hard to pigeonhole myself.
Groups are easier to categorize, though.

[Jack_of_Words]

@Annadroid

I think there are different types of feminism. Evidence suggest this to be true.

Feminism - By Branch / Doctrine - The Basics of Philosophy

http://www.sociology.org.uk/as4i4c4.pdf

Personally, I am simply a human individual. It is hard to pigeonhole myself.
Groups are easier to categorize, though.

There are, without doubt, different types of feminism - just as there are different types of meat. I’m not a vegetarian, as it happens, but I am an anti-feminist.

[LinusK]

@Evil_Economist

I bet he hasn’t done any of this shit, but either way it has nothing to do with feminism.

If it’s irrelevant, why did you bring it up?

Unless it’s illegal, it’s none of his fucking business what people, feminists or not, do with their time, money, or resources.

I see. Does your rule apply to everyone, or just to feminists?

[LinusK]

@Evil_Economist

Posting extremely stupid analogies about NBA players on page 11 of an internet thread isn’t raising anyone’s awareness of anything.

Certainly not yours.

And when it comes to whether or not he’s done anything about it: if he hasn’t actually done anything about it, then posting a whinging diatribe about how feminists don’t do enough is a particularly contemptible form of hypocrisy.

No, you had it right on the post before this one: “either way it has nothing to do with feminism.”

Sounds like the kind of thing you should go start an on-topic thread about.

You should heed your own advice.

You’re conflating two different issues: whether feminists seek to improve the the lives of both men and women, which they do. And whether it’s any of your fucking business how they prioritize their lives, which it isn’t.

Since you say that they do (seek to improve the lives of men), perhaps you’d like to give some examples.

[LinusK]

@Evil_Economist

The descriptor “useless” covers a lot of his posts.

Do they say that? For those who do are their actions different than their words? Do you have proof of this? Then those specific individuals who do those things are by definition hypocrites. Not sure what this has to do with feminism, though.

Unlike our hypothetical feminists, LinusK is posting in this thread.

This thread is about feminism, not about me. If you want to join a thread full of insults about me, I’m sure you can find one in the Pit.

[LinusK]

@Kimstu

Originally Posted by Robot Arm
No, but it’s been a point of contention in this thread that feminists care about issues affecting men and boys as much as they do those for women and girls. Linus may feel (and I think his most recent post supports this) that feminists didn’t cause the problems he listed, but that they also don’t fight as hard to correct them as they have to boost the performance of girls in school.

But that “feeling” completely ignores the abundant evidence that feminists do care about the negative effects of gender stereotyping and other forms of sexism upon men and boys. To take just one example, here’s the well-known blogger and author Crystal Smith of the blog “The Achilles Effect: Boys, Masculinity and Gender Stereotypes”, on boy-specific problems in education:

In Part One of her book, Ms. Allyn outlines why she chose to focus on boys. The fact that boys are falling behind girls in literacy and school achievement is not news, but Ms. Allyn offers a brief and relevant discussion on why this is happening. She uses a few key statistics without overwhelming the reader with numbers. She also talks about the shift in today’s schools toward “assessment and standardization in educational policy,” which leaves little room for creativity in delivering the curriculum and may be causing some kids to tune out at school.

The numbers about boys’ achievement in literacy do not lie, and there are many people pointing the finger at the education system. Some even go so far as stating that the school environment has been feminized […]

I am no expert on the education system, but the inclusion of this kind of statement about schools concerns me because it disregards the role of socialization on boys’ attitudes. Yes, boys are misjudged and considered problems more often than girls, but the failure to acknowledge socialization in a discussion about boys and school seems to me to be an incredible oversight. The Toronto Star published a letter I wrote about this in 2009, in which I said:

“Virtually from birth, we impose on boys a very narrow definition of masculinity – one that teaches them to value noise and action over quiet and focused attention. The boisterous, sometimes aggressive behaviour that some boys exhibit is not reined in when it is inappropriate; rather, it is excused with that hoary old phrase “boys will be boys”. Boys are encouraged to play with noisy machines and superhero toys more often than they are asked to sit down to a quiet activity. Pop culture feeds them a steady diet of male characters that are action-oriented and hyper-masculine.

We allow these influences to permeate their consciousness. We often reinforce them through the language we use and the activities we choose for them. And then we expect them to sit quietly in a classroom and listen.”

Socialization into traditional masculine roles teaches many boys that it is “uncool” to follow rules or ask for help. I think Ms. Allyn’s arguments about the reasons boys are falling behind would have been stronger had she addressed socialization as a contributing factor to boys’ sometimes negative attitudes toward school. (The Globe & Mail covered this subject in an article last year.)

Here’s the article she mentions, written by a feminist female journalist and citing the research of a feminist female psychologist:

This is the all too-common tale of the boisterous, restless boy “red-flagged” as the problem pupil that nobody wants in their class. Viewed as too difficult to teach and too disruptive to control, the less help this boy gets - especially in language skills and reading - the worse he does. […]

Nature is certainly a player in these stories - boys tend to be more active than girls, and mature later - but studies have found relatively small overall brain differences between girls and boys. The bigger player may be environment - the nurture side of a boy’s life, where parents and teachers have a major influence to either help him reach his full potential, or box him into a role that holds him back.

To boost math scores among girls, the youngster had to get the message that their hardwired brains weren’t holding them back. “Now we are doing the opposite to boys: Boys are immature, boys can’t sit still, boys can’t read and write. That can’t help them,” says Lise Eliot, a neuroscientist studying gender difference. So in large part, the solution for boys may be changing that message.

While antifeminists like LinusK sit around whining that “feminists only care about girls” because their awareness of feminist thought is limited to outrage-du-jour soundbites, it’s overwhelmingly feminists who are doing the actual research on disadvantages suffered by boys, who are raising public awareness about the problems boys face, who are counseling and supporting the parents of boys with educational difficulties, and who are proposing strategies for improving the educational success of boys.

Which, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense. For one thing, many, many feminists are mothers of sons, and they generally care just as much about the ways sexism harms their sons as about the ways it harms their daughters.

Antifeminists, by contrast, have a pretty shit track record on actually doing anything to alleviate the problems experienced by men and boys. What they mostly seem to care about is using those problems as a grievance in order to whine about how men and boys are disadvantaged so it must be feminism’s fault.

A “whiner,” am I? I wonder if it’s possible to criticize feminism without being a whiner?

When feminists criticize, well, everything, are they too “whining”?

There’s a word for people who don’t think there’s a difference between boys and girls: they’re called “childless”.

Anyway, behind the coy language, what your feminist friend is proposing is trying to make boys more like girls.

It’s funny, in a world that embraces transgendered people, that feminists are among the few who still insist that male and female is social construct, and that if we could if we could only get boys to act more like girls that so many problems - like boys’ alienation from a feminized educational system - could be solved.

You might check out the story of David Reimer. He was surgically made into a girl, after a botched circumcision mutilated his penis. A doctor - an advocate of the “gender is a social construct” theory, told his parents to raise him as a girl.

He began experiencing suicidal depression at the age of 13, and ultimately killed himself with a sawed off shotgun.

[T.M]

Yesterday I walked past a ladies only gym. I do not have a problem I can understand why some ladies would prefer men not to be around when they workout. If I wanted to start a men only gym I would not be allowed to, the sisterhood would be up in arms against me, men only clubs in the U.K. have been forced to allow woman members. Why??? There are many ladies based clubs men would never dare to enter.
The main problem with gaining equal rights for woman is a rampant sisterhood that gets everyone’s back up both men and woman

[LinusK]

@MaxTheVool

LinusK (and others who agree with him), here’s my question:

I agree that you have found some number of quotations from self-identified feminists which are troubling. Some are hateful, some are divisive, some are anti-male.

But my experience as a man living in a liberal part of the country (silicon valley), interacting with liberal women (such as my mother, my wife, my sister) who identify as feminists in no way leads me to believe that the type of extreme rhetoric you have been pointing out is at all representative of the way they actually live their day to day lives. I feel like this observation is in accord with observations and claims posted by many people in this thread, many of them women who identify as feminists.

So my mental model of feminism is that of the tens of millions of women in the US who identify as feminists, the vast vast VAST majority just live normal lives, raise kids, have husbands, have jobs. They believe that women should have the right to be CEOs and presidents. They do their best to make sure that if their daughters play with dolls instead of playing sports, it’s because that’s what the daughter actually wants to do. They oppose sexual harassment in the workplace. They do NOT pay much attention at all to the writings of random women who are associate professors at liberal arts colleges and make outrageous statements about men being obsolete, or all sex being rape, or what have you. They certainly do not think that such women speak for them or define feminism.
OK, so that’s what I think is true. I did say that I had a question for you, and it is twofold:

(1) Do you think my position is accurate? Why or why not? How might we test my position?

(2) Imagine for a second a world in which my view is accurate. In that world, is it fair or accurate or meaningful to level the types of criticism you’ve been leveling in this thread at feminism as a whole?

It’s certainly accurate: there are millions of casual feminists. They may believe in the wage gap, or the glass ceiling, or feel sense of solidarity or loyalty to other women. But they may not - as you said - have read Andrea Dworkin or Mary Daly, or attended a Wymen’s Studies class, or be a part of the National Organization of Women.

I’m not claiming these casual feminists are horrible people - merely that they’re misinformed and misled.

[MaxTheVool]

@LinusK

I’m not claiming these casual feminists are horrible people - merely that they’re misinformed and misled.

How so?

[Evil_Economist]

@LinusK

Precisely: feminism is not concerned about equality: it’s concerned with promoting the interests of its membership - privileged 1st world women.

I think you’d have found, if you’d bothered to do any investigation at all, that feminism is concerned with “achieving **equal **political, economic, cultural, personal, and social rights for women…A feminist advocates or supports the rights and **equality **of women.”

Now this is something you could have found out for yourself with less then 10 seconds of work on Google. How you managed to make it through 14 (?) pages of your own thread without bothering to do the most elementary research on the matter is surprising to me.

Wait, not really surprising…what’s that other word?

[Evil_Economist]

@LinusK

No, you had it right on the post before this one: “either way it has nothing to do with feminism.”

@Evil_Economist

And when it comes to whether or not he’s done anything about it: if he hasn’t actually done anything about it, then posting a whinging diatribe about how feminists don’t do enough is a particularly contemptible form of hypocrisy.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait…you mean to say you have done sweet fuck-all about the needs of underachieving men, but you have the fucking gall to come here and call feminists evil for not doing enough about the needs of underachieving men?

There’s a word for that sort of behavior.

Since you say that they do (seek to improve the lives of men), perhaps you’d like to give some examples.

They’ve been given, repeatedly, in this thread. The horse, as they say, has been led to the fucking water.

[Evil_Economist]

@LinusK

A “whiner,” am I? I wonder if it’s possible to criticize feminism without being a whiner?

It is. Step one: don’t be a fucking whiner.

You might check out the story of David Reimer.

I bet you can find a way to turn this story which has nothing to do with feminism, into a vehicle for the criticism of feminism. I’m not going to read the rest of your post because I don’t like to be disappointed in humanity.

[Evil_Economist]

@T.M

Yesterday I walked past a ladies only gym. I do not have a problem I can understand why some ladies would prefer men not to be around when they workout. If I wanted to start a men only gym I would not be allowed to, the sisterhood would be up in arms against me, men only clubs in the U.K. have been forced to allow woman members. Why??? There are many ladies based clubs men would never dare to enter.
The main problem with gaining equal rights for woman is a rampant sisterhood that gets everyone’s back up both men and woman

It took me less than 5 seconds on Google to find a link to a men’s-only gym in London.

But don’t let reality stop you from whinging; your factually wrong rants with fit right in with the posts from our resident anti-feminists.

[LinusK]

@MaxTheVool

How so?

The wage gap, for example (from “The Myth That Won’t Die”):

The Fair Pay Act will prohibit employers from paying men and women different wages for “substantially similar work.” At first glance, this prohibition might appear reasonable: Government data for 2014 show that women in California earn, on average, 84 cents for every dollar earned by men. (Nationally, women earn about 79 cents for every dollar earned by men.)

But a closer look reveals a different picture. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) notes that its analysis of wages by gender does “not control for many factors that can be significant in explaining earnings differences.”

What factors? Start with hours worked. Full-time employment is technically defined as more than 35 hours. This raises an obvious problem: A simple side-by-side comparison of all men and all women includes people who work 35 hours a week, and others who work 45. Men are significantly more likely than women to work longer hours, according to the BLS. And if we compare only people who work 40 hours a week, BLS data show that women then earn on average 90 cents for every dollar earned by men.

Career choice is another factor. Research in 2013 by Anthony Carnevale, a Georgetown University economist, shows that women flock to college majors that lead to lower-paying careers. Of the 10 lowest-paying majors—such as “drama and theater arts” and “counseling psychology”—only one, “theology and religious vocations,” is majority male.

Conversely, of the 10 highest-paying majors—including “mathematics and computer science” and “petroleum engineering”—only one, “pharmacy sciences and administration,” is majority female. Eight of the remaining nine are more than 70% male.

Other factors that account for earnings differences include marriage and children, both of which cause many women to leave the workforce for years. June O’Neill, former director of the Congressional Budget Office, concluded in a 2005 study that “there is no gender gap in wages among men and women with similar family roles.” Time magazine reported in 2010 that in 98% of America’s largest 150 cities, including my hometown of Los Angeles, single women under 30 actually earned, on average, 8% more than their male counterparts.

Ms. O’Neill and her husband concluded in their 2012 book, “The Declining Importance of Race and Gender in the Labor Market,” that once all these factors are taken into account, very little of the pay differential between men and women is due to actual discrimination, which is “unlikely to account for a differential of more than 5 percent but may not be present at all.”

[Evil_Economist]

@LinusK

The wage gap, for example (from “The Myth That Won’t Die”):

You’re quoting an opinion piece (you do realize that, right?). Now, that opinion piece cites a book which, based on my prior experience with you, you haven’t read. (Hey, speaking of not having read, did you ever get around to watching that debate you were so interested in, but not interested enough to do more than read the title and then jump to conclusions?)

I’m willing to read the book, which I suspect makes one of us. But I’m not willing to comment on what it says until I’ve read it, which again I suspect makes one of us. Based on the reviews I’ve read it seems like an interesting book. And unlike some people I could think of, I tend to actually do research into things I’m interested in.

That being said, if the wage gap has closed, it’s due to the efforts of feminists whose tireless efforts led to the reduction in the pay gap. As I think Justice O’Connor said, you don’t get rid of the umbrella because it’s not raining right now.