Adams has been doing a running series on his blog examining Trump’s campaign through the lens of Adams’ understanding of persuasion theory. Adams sees Trump as an absolute master of persuasion who will beat Hilary in the general election.
I’m starting to believe Adams is right.
Clinton isn’t a feminist candidate because she’s female, she’s a feminist because she understands the hardships faced by women. There are plenty of women who are not feminists because they don’t understand how a woman is disproportionately harmed because she is a woman. To start, almost any women in the Republican side don’t seem to know or care that there’s a gender gap in pay, power, and how people treat them
I’ve seen figures which show the percentage of Americans who consider themselves feminists is only 18%.
Also, even assuming your figures are accurate, don’t you think it’s weird that a mere 60% of women consider themselves feminists? Surely you’d expect that figure to be close to 100%.
In looking for figures, I came across similar numbers, from less-respected pollsters than WaPo (e.g., YouGov). I can’t find anything about Perry Undem research, so I don’t know how reliable they are. YouGov, a different polling firm with lower numbers, gets a C+ rating from fivethirtyeight, compared to the A rating WaPo gets.
It seems that the reputation of feminism is on a slow rise. And while I wish 100% of women and men were feminist, we live in a crazy society; it doesn’t surpise me that the numbers are lower.
And he shares the MRA propensity for melodramatic pronouncements of DOOOOOOOM based on ridiculous overreactions to entirely unremarkable mundane situations.
Oh wow, a female presidential candidate is talking up the positives of having a female POTUS. Cue the apocalypse in 3…2…1…
Not really.
People who have bought in to the older system often have a stake in it. More sexually available women can be threatening for women who’ve believed sexual scarcity would keep their marriage safe. New economic expectations can be scary for women who haven’t developed workforce related skills. New ideas about gender roles can be uncomfortable for women who dream of their little girls being fluffy pink princesses.
Rigid gender roles are not just a matter of raw oppression. They are a part of an internally consistent system where people are rewarded for acting in specific ways. People who don’t play by those rules threaten to undermine the investment they’ve made.
Think about sex. The old deal was that women marry young and remain sexually exclusive to their husband, who provides economic support. Any woman having sex freely faced strong social sanctions and reduced prospects in life, so men had limited options for sex outside of marriage.
But once women start supporting themselves and not needing to maintain the scarcity value of sex, the whole system falls apart. The women who staked their well-being on the old system face find that what they’ve invested in no longer has the same value. What is left to do except rail on that “hookup culture” or whatever is ruining America?
Surely. 100%, that’s what you’d expect, since human beings tend to be so similar about everything. Why I can’t remember the last poll that didn’t have nearly 100% of respondents saying the same thing.
Well, if he’s “gotten in trouble” for “gender relationships” he should probably shut up. After all, shutting up is what free speech is all about.
I assume - and I’m not him, so I can’t say for sure - he means that by saying is gender a qualification for president, she was undermining the idea that feminism is about equality. Egalitarianism means people should be judged by their merits.
Notably, this is a mistake Obama never made. His argument was that he would make the best president. Not that he was black.
Adams predicted Trump would win the nomination back in August, back when the general consensus was that he was a joke. At this point, he’s probably 4:1 to win it.
What I fear is that Hillary’s weaknesses will play to Trump’s strengths. A Trump presidency would be an unmitigated disaster.
I fear the Democratic Party made a mistake when it cleared the field for Hillary. We’d have been better off with many candidates, rather than just her, and the Socialist from Vermont. (Not that I don’t like Bernie. I do.)
Modern feminism destroys itself when the pouty little girls on Facebook hit 30.
Number one, the quote suggests (to me, anyway) that Scott Adams is positioning himself as a expert on and a defender of modern feminism.
Number two, because number one is patently ridiculous (he is certainly concern trolling), there is no number two!
No–shutting up is what not sounding like a dumbshit is all about. Free speech isn’t implicated one way or another.
It would help if we knew what actual statements, if any, by Clinton sent Adams into his paroxysm of pearl-clutching about the catastrophic damage thereby inflicted on feminism.
It’s not particularly enlightening just to discuss your interpretation of what you think Adams’s interpretation of some unspecified statement by Clinton may have been.
Partly but not exactly true.
Actually, Albright and Steinem did that, but it was Second Wave feminism they discredited, not the more modern form of Intersectional social justice.
Hillary kind of encouraged it, maybe.
I can understand. As a woman attempting to break into a job that is dominated by men, it is important to to convince people it’s acceptable for a woman to be president.
If she’d said gender was an important selling point for the job, that would be different.
I fear that he’s right too. I will give myself entirely unverifiable credit for predicting Trump’s nomination back in the summer. And for putting money on it, too.
But I always thought he’d lose the general. Now I’m not so sure.
Are you under the delusion that freedom of speech means you can’t self censor? I never tried to force him to shut up. I just said I’m surprised he hasn’t chosen to of his own volition.
I’m also surprised you keep bringing up feminist topics here, as they don’t seem to ever go well for you. Am I now going to get modded for junior moderating?
Neither of you seem to know what you are talking about on this subject.
I’m making my way through that series now.
I’m not sure how much of Adams’ is serious, or just trolling. But there’s no doubt that he’s a bright guy.
Referring to Hillary playing the gender card, he says:
That made me laugh.
Anyway, insulting a large bloc of voters is a poor election strategy. But it fits with her generally poor political instincts.
Adams has said that his banking career at Crocker National was dead-ended by the company mandate to only promote women to achieve gender parity. So he probably sees Hilary with a jaundiced eye.
Why? Did Hilary work at Crocker National?
I think we should should look at more questions in that poll because on other sites the same poll was reported to not be so bad:
Seems to me that many thought about the more militant kind of feminism in the quoted question. When asked:
“Do you believe in social, political, legal, and economic equality of the sexes” 78% did agree, and when asked about:
“Do you think there is full equality for women in work, life, and politics or is there still work to be done?” 76 percent said: “No, there is still work to be done”.