You said: “She does a decent job of defining what feminism means and one of the definitions she offers is that it pretty much means is treated just like one of the guys.”
I wouldn’t ask out a guy in any context. Is it sexist and/or anti-feminist of me to ask out a woman in any context? If I do, that’s not treating her just like one of the guys because I would never ask out a guy in any context.
I wouldn’t flirt with a man in any context, leering or not. If I flirt with a woman, is it sexist and/or anti-feminist of me to flirt with a woman in any context?
You can see that the definition of feminism provided is, at best, overly broad. Perhaps some refining of concepts would be useful.
Here’s two situations:
1:
Scene begins. I see a female coworker I fancy enter the room one morning. I do not leer at her.
Michael: My, you look good today in that shirt.
Her: I always look better when I’m talking to a handsome man.
End scene
2:
Scene begins. I see a female coworker I fancy enter the room one morning. I do not leer at her.
Michael: My, you look good today in that shirt.
Her: Yeah, whatever.
End scene
If I would not tell a male coworker “My, you look good today in that shirt.” Have I done something wrong in the 1st case or 2nd case or both or neither case?
The 2nd case wasn’t a two way street since she did not respond in kind. I also would never have told a male coworker that they look good in a shirt.
It would make you a typical American woman, is what it would make you. Plenty of women on the very board defend that very position; that you should treat every passing male as a potential rapist, and that doing so isn’t sexist in the least. Treat every man you meet as if at any moment he’s going to grab you and drag you into an alley to rape, while any men nearby cheer him on. That as far as I can tell is the modern American female norm when it comes to how they feel about men; we’re monsters in their eyes.
Complaining about being treated as a potential rapist is sexist as far as they are concerned, however.
There’s at least two ways to see this perception of someone being a potential rapist.
1: That individual man has a large chance of being a rapist.
2: That individual man has a probability of a few percentage points of being a rapist. He very likely isn’t. But since rape is so severe in its consequences, I’m going to be on my guard until I find out more about him to make sure the probability is insignificant.
If the severity of a danger is quite great, even a very small probability of it occuring can make it worthwhile and reasonable to take preventive measures. I think that’s what most women mean when they talk about men being potential rapists.
By that logic, it’s “worthwhile and reasonable” to treat every woman like she’s potentially going to falsely cry rape, or potentially planning to marry a man then murder him for the inheritance. Or to treat every black male you meet as a potential gangbanger, every Islamic person as a potential terrorist, and so on.
If you genuinely think that the “typical American woman” thinks most men are potential rapists and see us as monsters then you are both extremely ignorant of women engaging in the same kind of thinking as people who view all Muslims as potential terrorists and think all black men are potential rapists.
Now, I don’t know what would possibly make you feel that way regarding most women and I am not going to shit up this thread speculating, but I don’t think I’ve met a single woman who feels that way or treated me like a potential rapeist and based on my name, ethnicity and physical appearance, I suspect women would be far more likely to be paranoid about me than you. I also don’t remember any female posters on this board showing animosity towards men and think male posters making noxious remarks about female posters vastly outnumber the former.
I always recommend anyone terrified of Muslims to meet a few of us and talk to us and you’ll find that we’re not all so bad. I say the same with people who have really negative attitudes towards blacks and I’ll say the same for people who make such bigoted comments about women.
And if attributing an attitude or behavior to most of a gender in a locale is “bigoted, sexist claptrap”, then you are guilty of the same thing by claiming that vastly more male posters make “noxious remarks”. Unless of course you think such claims are only sexist when made about women.
Had I claimed most American men behaved in such a way you’d have a point, but I didn’t do you don’t. I merely noted I saw far more male posters on this board making noxious comments about women than female posters making noxious comments about men.
Similarly, I’ve seen huge numbers of white posters make racist comments about minorities but making such a statement doesn’t mean most whites are hateful bigots or that even most whites on this site are such hateful bigots.
Now, since you claim I’m “not paying attention” perhaps you can give some concrete examples from your life to support your thesis that “the typical American woman” view men as monsters and potential rapists.
If something could be blaming the victim, we should presume it is? This is a phenomenon that often comes up in these discussions. If there is some way that words/deeds could possibly be interpreted negatively, then they ought to be.
Apparently, if Finn says anything that could be interpreted as blaming the victim, you’ll interpret it as blaming the victim. So tell me what should be appended to Finn’s statement so as to make it clear that there is absolutely no probablity that there is any victim blaming?
If nobody says “hey, are you blaming the victim?” then probably nothing.
If someone does say that, then you should probably say “no, I’m not.” And then go on to explain what we talked about earlier.
What I was saying is that some people who say this, like you perhaps, are not blaming the victim, but some might be. That’s all. Like you said, it absolutely could be victim blaming. That’s all I was saying.
No, of course not. Aren’t we talking about two different things here? One being the way you treat the majority of women in your day- to- day interactions and the other being the way you approach an individual woman that you are romantically or sexually attracted to. I doubt you want to date every women you meet.
I don’t remember claiming that this was the definative defination of feminisim but rather a decent guide to how most of us females would prefer to be treated. I’m not going to yell at you for holding a door open for me because I hold doors open for men. I won’t presume that you’re implying I’m too frail to open a door, I’ll presume that you are civil. And interestingly enough, Moran thinks men flirt with each other all the time-on a golf course, when buying drinks for each other in a boy’s night out etc.
Really? I compliment men and woman fairly equally. In the first scenerio, you were given a clear cue that your comment was appreciated. In the second scenerio, you were clearly and quickly shut down. Is it all that difficult to determine that Woman A would enjoy continuing the banter and Woman B is not at all interested in the direction the conversation is going?
You really need to meet some new women if that’s your idea of ‘typical’.
“Are you flirting with me, sir?” she said sitting up just a little straighter and smiling. How very lovely.
Indeed. (Apologies for not contributing to my thread – been busy off thread and it’s a little hard to keep up.) I always heard people saying, “Believe men and women should be equal? You’re a feminist” and thought I was one. I believe in women’s access to reproductive care (men’s, too, but that doesn’t seem to be a huge issue) and in equality and that we shouldn’t let gender roles hold back men or women from doing what they want to do. Where I get wary is I’m told that I have to subscribe to the same thought process as everyone else. Especially when most of this is so very subjective.
It also just seems that so many women who are feminists now are marked by an intense anger, which I just don’t get. The term “mansplain” (which refers to when men explain things to women in a condescending manner), for example. I just don’t understand why. I was heartened to see at least one self-professed feminist say she dislikes the term. Though this was balanced out by a commenter stating she thought it was fine and that she had no problem with people using other forms of explain (thinsplain and whitesplain). When I read blogs like that about women complaining about men like that, it makes me wonder if I’m living in a totally different world than these women. I’ve never had these experiences.
Plus it seems to be that any time a man explains something about being a woman (or other oppressed class) to a woman (or minority, etc.), it’s mansplaining. Which seems silly – being a woman/minority doesn’t mean you know everything about that experience. And personal anecdotes don’t equal hard data. “Stop mansplaining” to me equals “Stop telling me things I don’t want to hear.”
FWIW, I don’t think we live in a rape culture: I do think we live in a consumer culture, which has the side effect of encouraging all sorts of crimes, violent and non-violent, sexual and non-sexual.
But anti-consumnerism is my bug in the bung, so everything is filtered through that lens. For femminist theorists, everything goes through their particular lens, Tea Partiers through theirs, etc.