Actually, boys do fine on test scores: 499 to 495 on reading, and 530 to 499 on math. It’s on grading that boys fall behind.
Help! Help!!..I’m being oppres…
Ah, nevermind…
What’s the plan? Run around a bit and try to sound like a crowd?
Oh MMMiller, are you suggesting he shouldn’t be allowed to criticise your philosophy? Have you applied a critical eye to it? Why would anybody need an additional reason to criticise? The discussion, by the way, is titled ‘On Feminism’, so he’s not really framing a discussion on men’s issues at all, is he? You’re framing criticism as an issues…issue, because you don’t like the criticism - and you’ve evinced no care for the issues either.
My prefered [sic] form of argument is to ask questions, which I’ve repeated in vain - one of which was in the post you just quoted (you ignored the question). The other was repeated in a slightly earlier post. All the mainstream feminists have ignored them. I’ll post them again later I expect.
But to answer your question, the analogy with religion that other feminist posters have raised and on which I have expanded, works better than atheism. I’m equally as likely to criticise any other religion - to challenge, for example, the catholic church (based on their beliefs and the actions of ‘fringe’ individuals protected and excused by the mainstream). Atheism is not a belief system (but at least ‘You’re not a feminist? I bet you’d attack atheists!’ is more novel than ‘YNAF? I bet you’re a racist anti-semitic misandrist baby-eater’). It’s hard to argue with atheism, eh? If only feminism wasn’t so…problematic.
You’re not criticizing (or not just criticizing) – you’re telling us that what we believe isn’t feminism. That’s very different, and akin to telling Jews that what they believe isn’t Judaism.
And yet nobody (and it’s the same nobodies as the earlier thread) wants to back up ‘extremist’ with anything other than bald assertion. The word you want there is ‘foundational’, or somesuch. The positions that are entrenched not only in women’s studies courses but also pervasive in academia. The positions that educated a generation of activists and which fuel the ‘third wave’ of women’s warriors. The positions that underpin the entire philosophy, which is why I keep you’re saying you’re not feminist. You’re an egalitarian, if you wish, if equality is what really motivates you, but by claiming to be a feminist while rejecting its principles you merely shield the bigots and promote inequality.
I’m not really sure what to do with this conflagration of fantasy and incoherence. The half of it that’s comprehensible doesn’t bear any resemblance to anything I’ve said, and the other half doesn’t bear any resemblance to anything at all. “You’re framing criticism as an issues issue,” is already pretty high on my list of “Favorite Verbal Flailings.”
But I do like that little moan you make when you say my name. You’re not the first guy I’ve had the effect on.
Okay, and yes? This doesn’t answer my question. Can you take a stab at it?
It’s worth pointing out that boys with the highest test scores probably gravitate to schools like MIT, Ga Tech, and other STEM schools where male admissions is higher than average.
I’ve just done it again, before seeing this. I’m not aware of extremist jews, though I’d suppose ultra-orthodox jews would dare to tell other jews what judaism is. If I met some self-identifying jews who declared they were atheists who ate pork, I might well tell them that what they believe isn’t judaism. Someone overestimates the magical properties of ‘self-identifying’…
I like ‘akin’, by the way, it doesn’t get enough outings, it seems to me. Shame it’s not actually pertinent here. There is value in your post though - we learn that once again, feminists seek to elevate a largely economic political philosophy to the status of a religion. It’s that priesthood scam you’re after, isn’t it? ‘You must do what we say, without criticism, for as long as we can think of things you can do to benefit us, and woe betide the heretic or heathen! Now, deposit your sacrifices here and remember to read the memos!’
We keep backing up “extremist” with “misandrist”. We feel comfortable with the definition of terms. You simply can’t/won’t accept them. Perhaps it’s you who is failing to define your expectations.
Baby and bathwater.
If I tell you that I was raised both an atheist and (ethnically) a Jew, would you put either claim into question at the expense of the other? Is my atheism undermined by the fact that I have participated in both religious and ethnic/traditional ceremonies? If not, then why can I not be both an egalitarian (in the general humanitarian sense) and a feminist (in a gender equality sense)? Does one undermine the other?
You’ve answered my question as I was asking it.
For the record-- the women quoted by Linus are decidedly “second-wave.” None of them are younger than 74; half of them are dead.
I don’t think you understand what I mean. If you were a feminist, it’d be similar to a orthodox Jew telling other Jews what real Judaism is. But you’re not a feminist – in fact, you oppose feminism. So you’re akin to an opponent of Judaism telling Jews what real Judaism is.
It has nothing to do with religion – feel free to substitute any non-religious ideology. We can try “egalitarian” – you telling feminists that we aren’t feminists, and what real feminism consists of, is akin to an opponent of egalitarianism telling egalitarians that their beliefs are not real egalitarianism. Whatever you call your beliefs – if someone who claimed to be an opponent of your system (Jackism, perhaps, if not egalitarianism) – I doubt you would be persuaded of anything if this Jackism/egalitarianism opponent told you that your beliefs were not real Jackism or real egalitarianism.
And you can feel free to criticize – criticize and challenge away. There hasn’t been much of that, though, except for the version of feminism that none of the feminists in this thread follow.
And I am comfortable with my use of ‘extremist’ to mean the bulk of feminists, and most especially those feminists whose activism affects the world (as opposed to those feminists who sit on SDMB saying ‘but I’m a feminist, so you should stop talking about it’.
I don’t buy the ambitious assertion that half a dozen (give or take nineteen) random internet ‘feminists’ have any claim to be mainstream, let alone that their ‘mainstream’ defines the movement. The history, the actions and activists, the impacts and inequalities, these define the movement.
If you want to keep claiming that the acknowledged ‘bad’ of your treasured ‘good’ is barely there, just a withering rump, a fringe, a few bad apples, then will one of you please at least attempt to demonstrate that? Otherwise it’s just partisan chanting like football hooligans.
Luckily, when we pull the plug, egalitarianism saves the baby.
If you’re an atheist, I don’t think it’s contentious to say you’re not a Jew. Whether you were or not seems irrelevant, why did you bring it up?
As to your question, it’s been covered. An egalitarian covers the old ‘dictionary definition’ of feminism, leaving ‘feminism’ as a word to mean racist egalitarian, or such. Well, more properly, sexist egalitarian (though both are clearly oxymoronic). Feminism isn’t built on gender equality, it’s built on “If women are to have more it must be taken from men” (didn’t catch her name, she was a self-identifying representative of women appearing on BBC Radio 4). Feminism isnt a word for gender equality.
My bolding. If you want quality, cough up the dough (see what I did there?)
Yes, they’re the ones who claimed that the first wave were the suffragists, so their hatred had some credibility to cloak it. They’re the ones whose words inspire the third wave, who know now to pretend - like the British National Party trying to pass themselves off as a politicalians when they just agitate skinheads to race hate.
I’m not sure you do, and if you keep trying to elaborate on a flawed analogy, nobody will
I’m akin to a critic of judaism, which is not a perfect philosophy (though considerably more popular and significantly less flawed than feminism). Again (since I never said I was like an orthodox jew), I am like someone telling an atheist pork-eater that they’re not a jew, even if they say the magic words ‘self-identified’.
There have been questions, which I keep repeating. Here’s one of them again:
What would constitute ‘equality’ for you now? When will feminism be finished?
Or is it more like Judaism - it explains the world eternal: Men bad, woman good, and so feminism will always need to oppress men. (To be fair, the most I’ve ever heard a feminist call for is 4,000 years of female rule, to ‘equal’ the oppression all men have dealt to all women with their toxic rapiness - that’s still 4 times more ambitious than Hitler…)
Your love of words doesn’t entitle you to create your own definitions for them, Jack.
Here’s how Oxford defines “feminism”:
Mirriam-Webster does not disagree.
I’m done playing this tiresome game with you, Jack. You’ve nothing to offer but fatuous pedantry on subjects you know nothing about.
Fourth. Except I don’t think she’s saying that all men are dicks. The phrase implies some Freudian identity construction. I’d need to be more familiar with her work to be certain.
And they are something like .0000000000000002 percent of all women (my math may be slightly off).
Dictionaries are about as irrelevant as they can possibly be in this conversation.
Class hatred is never right. It’s the problem in the first place, not the solution.
“Jew” is an ethnicity as well as a religion (as Quicksilver mentions), so this could indeed be contentious.
This is what you believe, but many of us believe that “feminism” covers the “old dictionary definition of ‘feminism’”.
If multiple people tell me that they’re not understanding me, I’ll certainly re-evaluate how I’m communicating. If it’s just you, then I feel okay about it.
Not just “someone”, but ‘someone who opposes Judaism and believes it is a bad thing for humanity’ – Jews are unlikely to consider the opinion of such a person valuable as to who is actually a Jew. If you had no problem whatsoever with feminism, then I would certainly consider your opinion on what actually constitutes feminism much more strongly than for someone (you) who strongly opposes feminism and feels it is a very bad thing.
When women and men are treated equally by law and by society – including control over one’s body, equal career choices, roughly equal representation and equal opportunity at all levels of business and government, and many other aspects. Not that feminism would be “finished” at that point – feminism and other egalitarian philosophies will always be necessary to prevent any backsliding into past inequalities (or future inequalities).
EDIT: No idea where that “u” at the top came from.
I was kidding.