The only footing for your argument is if somebody lies about what actually happens. It’s only dissmissive of the real suffering of women if somebody is arguing that what happens doesn’t. It’s not merely acceptible, it’s important for alternative sociological models and concepts to be used to explain data.
It’s possible that “rape culture” is the best-fit for what’s happening. You can absolutely argue and support that. And you can do your best to disprove alternative views. But you’re not allowed to simply tell somebody that they’re not allowed into a conversation because they have a different view, a different model, or a different way to understand the same information unless they lie.
What’s with all the martyrdom, jesus aitch christ? It’s like I called you a racist or something. Call yourself what you want, it’s truly no skin off my proboscis. But I don’t consider people who advocate against the basic tenets of feminism to be feminists any more than I consider someone who eats meat to be a vegetarian. Your hurt feelings because a feminist won’t call you a feminist don’t matter to this feminist in the slightest. Feminist feminist feminist feminist, it’s not even a word any more!
Look. Words have meanings, okay? And a person who states, “There is no rape culture in the US,” or, “Patriarchy doesn’t influence current gender relations whatsoever,” while calling themselves a feminist, is (to me) hypocritical on this issue. It doesn’t mean we can’t still have a beer or work in the same office, it just means we probably shouldn’t discuss feminism with each other. I can live with that; can you?
If nothing else, it’s clear that there doesn’t appear to be a universal consensus on what constitutes a feminist. This is my belief, you don’t have to accept it. I don’t hate you, I don’t dislike you, I really don’t even know you. I just don’t think you’re a feminist if you believe the aforementioned statements. It’s not the end of the world.
If this makes me an extremist, I’ll accept that label.
/exits thread stage right
If you insult folks and tell them that they can’t be part of a movement for gender equality because they don’t cleave to orthodoxy, expect a non-zero percentage to respond with less than joy.
Of course, “rape culture” (which doesn’t exist) or “the patriarchy” (which is a Conspiracy Theory) are not basic tenets of Feminism. The basic tenets of Feminism are that women should have equal rights and equal social status and that individual women should be treated as individuals rather than fungible units of “femininity”. When you find that you’ve made up a nonsense set of “basic tenets” that just so happen to dovetail with your personal preference for sociological hypotheses, it’s a pretty good clue that you’re no longer at all firmly grounded.
Amusingly you start with the claim that words have meanings, then go on to redefine “Feminism” then pretend that not agreeing with your idiosyncratic definition is “hypocritical”.
Your argument has gotten away from you.
How can the concept of rape culture be a basic tenet of feminism if the concept itself was barely known about until a few years ago? The concept of rape culture is a basic tenet of feminism even though feminism has existed for 99% of its history without it?
How you define words really doesn’t impact my life one way or another. I have just been going on these past few decades, treating my Wife as an equal partner in our home and finances, and raising our daughters to be independent minded, self-sufficient people. For some reason I thought that was advocating “feminism” in some form, but I guess it was just me was just being all patriarchal and shit.
And the good thing about this, is that precisely because there is no universal consensus (even within the feminist spectrum*), then whether **Rachellelogram ** does or doesn’t think someone else is a feminist has scant bearing whatsoever on whether that other person can call her/himself a feminist or can be accepted as a feminist or welcomed to the discourse on equal footing by feminists other than her.
Which reminds me of the worst kind of radical “feminist”. The ones that still, when push comes to shove, expect the man the do all the “manly” stuff AND at the same time hate the men for doing it.
Saying that you can’t be a feminist if you don’t believe in the patriarchy, or rape culture, is a bona fide No True Scotsman if there ever was one. All that’s required to be a feminist is to actively support equal rights, pay, etc for women. Your views on the hows and whys of the problems women face is immaterial, as are your ideas on how to fix it. Now, you may not be an “x wave” or “y school” feminist, but you’re still a feminist.
I see this kind of talk all the time, like this article, which while it has some good points, uses the point “HE CONTINUES TO PARTAKE IN MEDIA OR ACTIVITIES THAT OBJECTIFY/DEGRADE WOMEN.” (copy pasted, caps are theirs)
This sounds great on the surface, and I agree it’s kind of annoying when a guy’s computer background is Megan Fox in various states of undress. While the article doesn’t go this far, some of its supporters I’ve talked with used statements about how watching porn isn’t feminist. Nonono, never mind all those feminist schools that say porn is empowering, or “hey, women enjoy sex too!” No, anybody who watches or supports porn is necessarily not a feminist, and is a fake one. Because they disagree with them.
There are many schools of thought, even among feminists. Claiming that the other side of the coin “isn’t feminism” because they don’t agree with you on the how’s or why’s is just plain arrogance.
I will admit that I’m a little fuzzy on what rape culture is, but I do believe that there are environments like fraternities and militaries that turn a blind eye to sex crimes and passively or actively encourage them. I don’t buy that the existence of these subcultures extend to the entire society. I don’t think there’s a top-down acceptance of rape, and I think that claiming the certain subcultures are indicative of the whole weakens your arguments. Although I do think there’s something very unhealthy about how the general society overlooks prison rape as being no big deal.
A few weeks ago a friend posted on Facebook something like (paraphrased) “We teach our daughters not to drink, not to wear tight clothing, not to walk home alone. We should be teaching our sons not to rape.”
To me, this is bullshit in at least two ways.
One: The fact is that there are bad people out there. Teaching our kids to protect themselves doesn’t mean we agree with what those bad people do. I don’t see a difference between teaching women to be careful about rape and teaching anyone to be careful in other ways. We teach our children to lock their car doors, but that doesn’t mean that we accept “stereo theft culture” as a society.
Two: We teach boys not to rape all the time. The “No means no” campaign was widespread and incredibly successful. For me, this started in sex ed in 4th grade, when we talked about consensual sex, and about how to make sure your partner was ok with things. I was specifically told many times to get verbal confirmation at each level of physical contact. Now we tell kids that it’s not just “no” that means no, it’s anything other than “Yes, bring it on” that means no. Hell, in college, I actually had a girl tell me “I’m in your bed; we don’t need to sign a treaty.”
As I understand it, men interrupt everyone more than women (in our culture); it’s not aimed at women and therefore isn’t sexist. It’s a conversational style difference, not sexism. Now, if men get all offended when women start interrupting people just like them, then that’s sexism.
It’s a little off-putting, to say the least, for a man to declare (after centuries of women fighting for men to say it) that he adopts the role and label of believing in human rights for women - only to have women get mad at them for it.
Feminism in its current incarnation has succeeded in purifying itself, and driving lots of women and men away.
When a man says “I’m a feminist” the better response is to engage him in a conversation about it, not tell him he can’t be, or that he can only be one if he checks off some beliefs.
These are general reflections based on conversations I’ve had elsewhere - I’m not commenting specifically on what you or anyone else has said in this thread.