You’re right that it shouldn’t be their burden, but then if things were fair we wouldn’t be having this discussion to begin with. As unfair as it is, it’s going to be the burden of those who are oppressed to speak up and convince the majority that things need to change. Whether you’re doing the convincing in the form of educating people or rioating, it’s still a burden that must be taken if they wish things to change.
I mean, there surely must have been some anthropological studies of little/never contacted tribal groups on this subject. That’s not perfect, since even an “uncontacted” tribe is still the inheritor of 250,000 years of human history and they weren’t always isolated, but still.
The nuance is getting lost. That construction worker can’t do much when his foreman boss won’t hire a woman, but that construction worker should keep his own house in order and not cat call, and tell his peers that it’s unacceptable when they do it.
The problem is I’m descending into “not all” territory in response to the suggestion that all men oppress all women. This is not a useful path to be going down for anybody.
So my question remains, what specific things can I do to stop individual rapists, wifebeaters, wolf-whistlers, and sexist pigs who propagate toxic masculinity? As far as I know, those people aren’t my friends; I’m not currently ignoring screams from an alley; and there’s no little boy here trying not to cry. I can vote and support causes that advance the ideals of equity and equality, but that’s kind of required to be a decent human being, and doesn’t do much to change any individual’s behavior.
The nuance is irrelevant.
That construction worker likely doesn’t want to do jackshit about it anyway.
What scarecrow in this thread made that suggestion?
How can it “remain” when you didn’t ask it before?
You could start by not playing this nuance game you’re currently doing.
Dropping the toxic idea that rape is primarily a thing of “screams from an alley” wouldn’t hurt, either.
Hmm. I guess the issue for me then is that I can’t always identify what is an extreme (and therefore a minority) view vs a non-extreme one, especially when many members of a large community of women (possibly the largest online?) seem to highly upvote and defend some of the more (at least in my view) extreme rhetoric or dismiss concerns about them (and even if some of them do, those tend to be aggresively downvoted).
Maybe that community doesn’t accurately reflect reasonable feminists. I certainly would really like to believe so, just have a hard time doing it.
A feminist by definition prioritizes equal rights and non-discrimination. These things apply to men as well so, if she is an honorable person, she would prioritize that as well. I think most women want fairness for all, but it’s the loud, militant fascistas that give feminism a bad name.
A self-selected group. And what you have linked to is someone else’s claim (or is it your post? Not that that would make it better.) that this group is such a hive of villainy.
Then work on that. Deciding “reasonable feminists” have a problem based on the frequency of up-votes and down-votes on effing reddit is a godawful way of analyzing feminism.
The ever-perceptive @naita beat me to it. If you choose to expect anti-social media to give you an accurate representation of what an -ism is, well, you get the confusion you deserve.
Now we can debate whether an -ism consists of what social scientists and academic theoreticians say it is, or whether instead it’s whatever its most vocal amateur advocates say it is when they’re performing for each other’s approval.
But I think it’s pretty clear that in almost all cases, the vocal amateurs almost by definition will be the extremists of their movement.
As with the fine Monty Python sketch about the People’s Judean Front, the more extreme folks are, the more they raise ever tougher litmus tests for how extreme is extreme enough, and heap scorn on those deemed lacking in revolutionary zeal. Whenever / wherever / whyever you see that extremer-than-thou behavior occurring, you can rest assured that the mainstream lies a good long way in the opposite direction.
Are there 100K rabid man-haters out there? Sure. There are also well over 100K rabid Dallas Cowboys or Boston Red Sox haters out there. Civilization will not collapse over any of these passions.
Others have covered my thoughts on this pretty well. Anyone who talks about how all men are pigs is being a jerk in their personal life, but they aren’t shooting up Moose Lodges or anything. It’s bigotry, it’s jerkiness, but it’s not oppression. I don’t want to be friends with someone who says stuff like that, any more than I want to be friends with anyone who paints with any other broad brush; but I can’t get too fussed about their existence.
Awhile back I read someone’s essay about how “patriarchy harms everyone” was a bullshit phrase, because it suggested that “patriarchy harms women” was an insufficient reason to oppose patriarchy. I found that essay unpersuasive. Its second part–the claim that “patriarchy harms women” should be sufficient for opposing patriarchy–made complete sense to me. But from both a moral and a practical perspective, I figure it’s important to acknowledge also the lesser-but-real harm that patriarchy does to men.
When it comes to humanity’s epitaph, this has my vote.
When you are at a meeting at work, and a women makes a good suggestion that is ignored, your can say, “that’s a really good idea, Jane” to encourage other men to pay attention to it.
When you are walking home with a group of people k including leaving the hotel bar to go to each person’s room) and a woman breaks off from the group, and a lone guy follows her, you can follow, too, and stay with the other guy until the woman is safely in her room.
When you are interviewing candidates for a peer position, and you see some resumes with women’s names, you can make a conscious effort to think, “would i view this differently if the name was ‘john’?”
When you see a woman being hassled on a bus or subway, you can make eye contact with her, and pretend with body language and/or words that you are her companion. Men are much nastier to women alone than to women traveling with another man, and just thinking that you might be with her may prevent a man from trying something. It’s more effective and less likely to escalate if you “back up” the woman than if you try to confront the man, especially if you confront as an outsider.
Probably lots of other stuff, but that’s a start.
Well explained. Thank you.
From simply a practical recruiting perspective, saying something harms half the populace will get you fewer adherents than saying something harms 90% or 99% of the populace. But if one (such as that author) is more interested in passing purity tests than in effecting actual change, well … purify away.
Those are all good suggestions, and certainly ones I’ve heard before, and at least try to implement. I’m very fortunate to work in a place that takes its women seriously, and treats them appropriatelym so the first one rarely comes up. In my little slice of academia credit and citations are important, and we feel the “and Franklin” is necessary.
Most of those are very situational, though, and are not coming up while I spend time on a message board waiting for a compute job to finish, so I can move on to my next work task.
This reminds me a bit of the “all lives matter” response. Yes, it’s completely correct all lives matter. The problem is the unstated parts. Some people hear “[only] black lives matter” and others hear “all lives matter [except black ones]”.
So, yes, patriarchy harms everyone, but sometimes it’s important to say “patriarchy harms women,” because what (should) be meant is “patriarchy harms everyone, but women in particular get the bad end of it”. That goes back to my earlier statement about the difference between mere rhetoric, and actual actions. I’m fine with people saying “patriarchy harms women” as long as the actions to destroy the patriarchy work to elevate all of those harmed by it, not just replace one set of oppressors with a different set.
(Not that feminists need my approval, and I’ll still support them (unless they’re the TERF brand) even when they say things that include me in with those other men, you know, the ones causing the problems. However, if they’re looking at me to personally tear down the patriarchy on a sociatally significant level, then they’re strategy needs some work, and I’m going to need lots of help.)
Exactly so.
Just like there are plenty of men who hate women as a group, there’s also women who hate men. The big difference is how much more dangerous the former is.
I think about two different books I read as a teenager: Egalia’s Daughters, and something I think was one of Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover books. Both books described a society ruled by women (although I really don’t remember Bradley’s book, as I read it in the late eighties, and would rather not get dragged into a discussion of the particulars of it).
The primary difference is that Egalia’s Daughters thought it was a bad thing. It was a really clever satire of patriarchy, in which the women-dominated society was horribly sexist, and every argument about the natural superiority of men was flipped to be an argument about the natural superiority of women, and eventually one of the “housebounds” in the book wrote a satire of his society imagining a world where men dominated, and was yelled down for how stupid and unrealistic and misogynist it was and nobody got that it was a satire.
Bradley’s work, by contrast, seemed to revel in the turned tables, and saw nothing especially wrong with it. I did not find it especially compelling.
Yup. I see man-hating women as jerks, but not as threats.
There is no such thing as a ‘state of nature’ for human beings. Before we were Homo sapiens we already had many thousands of years of various experiments in social living. Those social experiments are what we ARE. It is a question which has no meaningful answer.
It’s the loud militant feminists that give misogynists an excuse to dismiss the entire movement. As well as the tentative, appeasing feminists, the feminists who feel required to give men hugs because otherwise they’ll be accused of being loud and militant … get my drift at all? In any movement, some people will be loud, and some will be angry, and some will be very angry and very loud. So the fuck what.
Bad things:
-
Ignoring oppression.
Silence is death. -
Distraction about who else is oppressed.
We are many, but each place and time needs a focus. -
Conflict about who is more oppressed.
Oppression is not a competition. -
Division among oppressed people.
E pluribus unum.
Good things:
-
Confronting oppression.
Not just direct confrontation, but within one’s self and in-group as well. -
Recognizing that oppressors can also be oppressed.
For example, spouse abuse is not a White-only problem. -
Listening to others’ descriptions of how they’re oppressed.
Use compassion when understanding what they mean, instead of looking for something to argue against. -
Unity of each oppressed person against any type of oppressor.
Look for external allies beyond your in-group.
There is an entire sci fi genre of women’s “utopias” and their challenges. I’m sure there are very good ones, but it’s not something I’m knowledgeable about. Ursula LeGuin’s books which touch on the topic (and few of hers do not, in some fashion) are all worth reading though. I assume you’ve read the Left Hand of Darkness, from your user name.
I wouldn’t go that far. Sure, there are men who use it to that extent, but there’s also a craving for relationships and just touch.
But, still, because of the way society is, expecting women to feel comfortable hugging or otherwise being affection to more men than they currently do is not really all that reasonable. Too many men would see it as an invitation to other things. It makes far more sense if men need more affection to turn to other men, and try to reduce the toxic lack of affection in many models of masculinity.
I say this as someone who definitely feels more comfortable hugging women, even women I’m not attracted to in any way. But I know that’s my issue, not women’s.
I bit off topic from the OP, but still about misogyny. Was folding clothes just now, and was smacked in the face with continuing attempts by society to keep women trapped in the home:
My wife’s are cut differently, and have a slightly smaller inseam, but those size differences aren’t due to necessary compromises for clothing size, forced perspective, or any other camera tricks, and both pairs are from Wrangler.
Even if I prefer not to think of myself as a member of the patriarchy, there is no denying that as a male I have privilege.
To try and bring it back to the OP:
- women’s issue: pockets in women’s clothing are too small
- men’s issue: sometimes keys get caught and the pocket twists around when pulling up the pants