The actions of some do not tar the entire movement, because feminism is not some big monolithic entity in complete lock step.
Life is not so black or white.
But since catsix does not allow areas of grey in this discussion–indeed, all feminists are man hating horrible subhumans that somehow weaken women and the world would better off without them–it’s a bit much to swallow to that she can temper things and yet other’s cannot.
It’s called being hoist by her own petard. Never mind.
Yep-that’s the position most of us here are now in–dammed if you try to talk about this issue, damned if you mention it, even briefly elsewhere. This subject has only once Correct position, and it is catsix’s.
Why would there be goodwill for anyone who shits all over threads like this one? I have no patience for her posturing or her gender confusion. We get it, we get it–catsix doesn’t like feminism, feminists, heck, women in general. Probably not even people–who can say?
Not all of us are so easily amused or so willing to let shit go–it pisses me off that a discussion like this is hijacked again and again by her to blow her own intolerant, misogynistic horn. I don’t see anywhere that anyone has said that she couldn’t be a strong woman. Somehow I doubt that any of the women here are weak. YMMV.
too late.
Nothing after that is accurate.
I didn’t bring that shit up at all. The usual suspects who can’t stand the fact that, oh my god, I have spoken an opinion different than theirs and backed it up with cites that feminism is an ideology full of lies started on that. They couldn’t refute the cites, so they tried to make it about me.
You want your thread back? Take it. You’re not going to pay attention to the facts I present anyway.
Thanks, sister–love ya, babe!
She was lucky, levdrakon. My mom, in the same position–divorced, kids to raise, in the same era–was refused a credit card specificially because she didn’t have a man to co-sign. They told her to have her brother do it. She also went through hell to get a home mortage in her name alone. The bank suggested that my dad might be willing to co-sign. Sure thing, after a knock-down divorce. The school system where she taught, which was considered progressive btw, issued wives’ paychecks to their husbands if they were both employed by the school.
It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t remotely fair and it made unapologetic feminists out of a lot of very ordinary, mainstream women.*
catsix’s mental contortions amuse me. For all her froth-specked ranting, she falls back on the central point of mainstream feminism: civic stature should be gender blind.
- Of course even then there were plenty of crypo-pussycats who made a huge freakin’ parade of “I’M not like them!” It’s the oldest tactic in the book, and one aimed specifically at making points with men. The syndrome is the same for a sterotypically ultra-femme sorority type or a good 'ol girl who ingratiates herself as a pal who doesn’t even like other women herself. C’est la vie. People don’t have to be grateful to anybody in history who made things better. That kind of willful denial illuminates more about the denier than the pioneers, IMO, but YMMV.
And as to the OP…good rant about the stupid behavior but it fell down on judgements about their apparel. One of the savviest feminists I ever knew (RIP, Sharon) was a bombshell who adored clothes and make-up when that stuff really wasn’t fashionable. She figured the whole point was the freedom to be herself, and anybody who didn’t like it could lump it. And she was right.
catsix, you’re an idiot. An ignorant idiot. You have no idea where you take place in history; y ou seem to think in fact that you’re larger than history.
You were born on third base. There’s really no debate here. The world that the women who built that first base for you were born in was an entirely different word. It had a lot more in common with Talibanesque gender culture than you obviously have any idea of. The world that you were born into, in this country at least, is entirely “on third base,” compared to say a century ago. There’s simply no debate here. The fact that you deny this is more about your ignorance and solipsism than it is about any kind of reality. It weakens the credibility of pretty much everything else you have to say.
Every last one of us, huh? How about those of us who countered with statistics that contradicted your statistics? Especially when those statistics came from credible and “non-feminist” institutions like the CDC?
To counter, every honorable definition feminism has been ignored by you. What part of “feminism is the study of the effects of patriarchy-- for good, bad, or indifferent-- on both women and men” is problematic? And yes, it does include male poverty. I stand by that definition solidly-- and I AM A FEMINIST RESEARCHER. Period. It says something that the only people who seem to disagree with that statement aren’t the feminists in this thread.
You can pull up all sorts of Andrea Dworkins or god-knows-who-else from the 70’s as counterproof and just ignore that modern feminism has moved far beyond them. You can pull up Catherine MacKinnon and not realize that her most extravagant claims are not taken seriously at all, and in fact is considered homophobic in most circles because her egregious attempts at anti-porn legislation ended up targeting lesbian publications ONLY. So just why do none of you anti-feminists ever take on Judith Butler, Annie Sprinkle, Patrick Califia, Judith Halberstam, Susie Bright, et al? Maybe because if you read their works you’d find them to your liking? Perhaps CatSix does not realize that the idea of the gender barrier as a social sign breaking down in parts of queer culture is due as much to feminist analysis as it is to queer analysis?
I also want to say that it PISSES me off to no end to hear about “man-hating lesbians.” Want to know a secret? They don’t exist anymore to ANY significant degree. Separatism died after the Barnard Conference controversy (look it up) and even then, lesbian separatists weren’t about hating men as much as it was about forming communities of women. But again, everyone trots out this moldy old stereotype because EWWWW, who wants to identify with that stereotype? Aren’t lesbians fat, ugly and hairy? Gosh, no wonder the college kids in their tiny outfits hate feminism, even if they’re boffing their roomates on the side 'cause bisexuality (but not REALLY!) is so hip now.
Let me point out, once again, that feminists do NOT work in a vacuum, we work hard and accept critique around global issues from worldwide feminists/womanists (I’ve noticed folks like Nawal El Saadawi or Amina Mama haven’t pinged anyone’s radar either), and we do work with men-- anyone remember AIDS? Queer rights? Read some Uma Narayan and she’ll show you how feminism and national liberation struggles intersect so vibrantly. Read El Saadawi and she will illustrate a complex and convincing argument of gender equality based on the Quran. Read Pat Califia, and he’ll convince you that radical sexuality was built from gay male sexual culture and sex-positive feminism.
Or don’t read them, and continue taking those tired old strawwomen out of the closet and beating them up.
I think the whole “if you are a woman you can’t say anything bad about feminists because they you owe them so much” is a completely ridiculous statement. Reasons include:
- It shows a complete lack of any sort of historical perspective. When it comes down to it there are literally millions of important events in history that have lead us up to this point. Feminism represets only an incredibly small fraction of what had lead us up to this point. To claim then that all of this stuff is the result of “feminisim” is rediculous, because it ignores all that has gone before.
So for instance without the black death sweeping across Europe in 14th century, much of the world may still be under some sort of feudal system, and then only the nobility would have any real freedom. Without the technological advances made (mostly by men too) in society then we may still all be loving some sort of farming existence. Who knows.
But anyway when it comes to going to universities I think women should be MUCH more greatful to Christianity than to feminism. It was mostly Christians that founded universities and where the concept originally comes from. In fact the first universities in the US were originally set up by churches as training colleges for new clergy members. Without Christianity (and it’s focus on the value of education) there may not have ever been universities for women to attend.
- It shows a misunderstanding of the history of the 20th century. What you all seem to be forgetting is that many of the leading feminists ALREADY HAD what they claimed to be fighting for. So in regards to university entrance many of the early feminists were university educated. Simone de Beavoir was not only educated in philosophy, she taught it at a university level. Betty Freidan was educated and worked as a psychologist.
Sure, it was harder for a woman to go to university in the 50s, but it was also a lot harder for men. Universities in the 50s were not just as they are now, but without the women. In the 1950s hardly anyone, male or female, went to university. Gender was not the only (or in many cases not even a specific thing) keeping people out. Issues of class and wealth were a much greater determiner than gender.
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The argument is really based around hi-jacking previous women’s movements, like the suffarregette movement. These movements aren’t really “feminist” in the modern sense of the word, because if you look at the philosophy of these groups it is markedly different to that of moedern day feminists. They may agree on the rightness of what they were fighting for (ie: both support women getting the vote) but the underlying reasons for why each believed that women should be given the vote is quite different.
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It ignores the harm that feminism has done to women in general. After some 40-50 years of the women’s liberation movement there is little evidnece to suggest that women are actually happier in their everyday lives. And there are several areas where feminism has probably done more harm than good.
Take for instance marraige. Feminism has typically attacked marraige as an institution that is all about dominating women. However all the studies show that women are actually better off being married than not. One of the leading causes of poverty amound women is single motherhood. In fact across the states of the US there is a strong correlation between the poverty of the state and the rate of single motherhood. Like it or not the best way for a woman to avoid poverty is to stay married.
And it is not like marraige is a terrible burden on women either. Studies will also tell you that amoung the happiest women in society are those that are married. Single and divorced women as a group simply are not as happy as married women. So in working to devalue marriage feminists have actually made women less happy. And so if feminism has made women less happy then why should they owe any allegiance to feminists or their ideals?
Joey Jo Jo
Let me add # 3 : Taste. Simply put, men and women tend to like different things. That may or may not apply to this specific imbalance, but it does apply to others, like the lack of women in ( for example ) engineering/computers. There are simply aren’t all that many women who like those careers. Various well meaning colleges try to “fix” this, but it doesn’t work no matter how many incentives they hold out. I do find amusing the underlying assumption that women can only be equal to men by being identical copies of us.
The usual explanation I hear is that women don’t work as much at a job as men; they take maternity leave/more vacations and so on. Personally I find it both believable and sensible; what’s the point in climbing to the top of the corporate ladder, if you destroy your non-job life to do it ?
First, it was likely more of a reference to such things as insanity and mental retardation, not simply money. There’s also the problem that counting “poverty” by income makes men look better and women look worse, since men tend to have higher income and women more assets. By that standard, if a woman in a divorce gets the house and car and the man has to live in a rat infested apartment, she’s “poor” and he isn’t.
I hope you didn’t think I was using that phrase seriously. I was talking more about the stereotype that all feminist are lesbians who hate men.
Did I ever say all feminists agreed with each other ? I just quoted some women who identified themselves as feminists.
Also, last I heard most feminists looked at Paglia as either some sort of traitor or a loon; not a representitive of the majority.
But what catsix states is that feminism has done nothing for her - that she is where she is today solely on the basis of her personal efforts and merits. How much feminism has done for women today could be up for debate, but surely it’s not an overstatement to say that feminism has been a significant influence in the fight for gender equality. You’re not saying that we would have arrived at gender equality even if women had been sitting on their hands and enjoying the view?
Cite? I’m not trying to be snarky, just curious.
I read a bit of Beauvoir in college, and my impression of her was that she was not fighting for women to be accepted into colleges, or gain the vote - what she was trying to do was to change the mindset of people. You can fling open the doors of college as wide as you like, but if women and men don’t see why things should change, then it’s not going to do much good, is it?
Good thing nobody’s making that statement, then. The closest anyone’s got to it around here is on the lines of “It is idiotic and ungrateful to slam all feminists and view them as completely, undifferentiatedly bad, since some feminists really did accomplish quite a lot for essential women’s rights.”
In other words, the sentiment is not “Be servilely grateful and never say anything bad about any feminists under any circumstances”, it’s “Don’t be a delusional bigoted moron.”
Sure, but I think the point of the comment about women and college was to highlight the crucial change that gave women just as much right as men had to go to college.
Feminism’s major accomplishment was not to originate the fundamental potential of achievement for human beings. Heck, if that’s what we were giving thanks for, we’d have to direct our gratitude mostly to the bunch of primitive protein chains that made possible life as we know it. Rather, the crucial achievements of feminism lay in obtaining for women some major opportunities that men already had, but which women were previously excluded from.
What do you mean, “hardly anyone”? As far back as 1940, 10% of all American adults over 25 had graduated from college, and 25% had at least some college education. By 1998 those percentages had doubled: 20% of Americans had graduated from college and nearly 50% had at least some college education.
About one-quarter of all degree recipients in 1950 were women, and in 2000 more than half were women.
So no, the proportion of men getting college degrees has not changed astronomically in the past fifty years; it’s less than twice what it used to be. The proportion of women getting college degrees, on the other hand, has increased much more significantly. (And of course, the variety of colleges now available to women is much larger than it used to be back when many colleges were male-only.)
Look, it isn’t modern-day feminists who coined the term “feminist” to describe support for women’s rights. Many of the 1910’s/20’s suffragettes called themselves “feminists” too.
The basic reason—that they felt women should have equal legal rights and be equal citizens with men—is exactly the same.
All you’re actually saying there is that the best way for a woman to avoid poverty is not to be a single mother.
And the feminist movements have certainly made mistakes from time to time, such as being too negative about the effects of marriage on women. But that doesn’t mean that the fundamental principles and achievements of feminism—i.e., achieving for women the same rights that men already had—were a mistake.
Which pretty well debunks the silly claim that we don’t owe anything to earlier feminists because they were only trying to get what they wanted themselves. For many feminists, it has always been an issue of principle and justice to demand equal rights for all women, rather than just saying “I’ve got mine, Jill”.
You don’t know much about nursing, do you? My comments and the links I posted all deal with staff nurses–NOT management, not the top of the corporate ladder (there is no such thing in nursing–you can rise to VP of nursing, sure–but then the salary comparisons to staff nurses of any gender are like Pacers to Mercedes, as is true of say bank tellers compared to CFO’s). The salary discrepancies are not explained by the reasons you cite–and even if it is true that men seek out specialties such as critical care in order to maximize their pay, they are still a distinct minority to the women who already work in critical care.
Getting dinged for maternity leave does not explain the nurses who do not give birth, ever–there are lots of these.
I can’t even start to address the bit about more vacations–where did you get this from? Most nurses get between 2-3 weeks of vaca a year–the bennys for both genders are usually the same–it’s the salaries we’re discussing here.
I think you are not at all familiar with the health care field, but want it to fit the model that you are most comfortable with–ie corporate, office work. Not even close.
I am trying to tone down the anger here, but I find this to be gravely insulting --was it deliberate? Are you seriously saying that the occurrence of insanity and/or mental retardation is more prevalent in females? I really need to see a cite for something that ridiculous.
Wow-project much? Who is the victim in your scenario? Why the need to victimize either side? How big are those rats?
My point is that it is illogical to claim say that catsix owes an allegiance to feminism while ignoring the many other things that have shaped the world in which she lives. If anything her world has been shaped far more by views like Christianity rather than by feminism. Why should feminism have some special place in her heart?
Besides, many of the claims of the advancements made by feminists are IMHO greatly overstated. For a start in feminist works there is a narrow focus on the life of the middle class. Many of the things that feminists claim their victories for were already widely held by poorer women. So for instance the “fight to work” in feminist history is really the fight for women to have good jobs. Poor, low class women have pretty much always been able to work. During the industrial revolution it was common for women to have jobs in factories or other places alongside men.
And as such I think there is legitimate questions as to whether “feminism” has really achieved much of the acceptance of woman in the workplace. Consider the fact that over the last 40-50 years the inflation adjusted value of the minimum wage has been going down. When the minimum wage in most countries was originally set it was set so that one person could earn enough to support a family, under the assumption that in the family only one partner should need to work. The increase of women in the workforce increased the number of dual income families, and as such businesses were able to argue that as such the minimum wage need only support one person, since each partner works they should be able to support themselves. Thus as more and more women have entered the workforce this increase in available labour has lead to business being able to pay workers less in real dollar terms.
Given that it is hard to know whether women were entering the workforce due to the success of feminism, or because employers were taking advantage of a movement to lower wages.
The other thing is that “feminism” by any useful definition is much more than just the belief in gender equality. Feminism is in of itself it’s own philosophy, and is not the only one that promotes gender equality. Therefore it is possible to have gender equality without feminism.
Sorry, I don’t have any convenient online cites. However I would point out that many of the early universities in Europe were founded early in the last millenium, when every scholar was also a clergy member. And since most of the European expansion happened when the countries were themselves quite religious the greatest educational needs in the new colonies was typically new clergy, and as such oringally the universities were established as seminaries. Of course they have changed substantially since then, but they were founded by Christians for Christian education.
But that is because by the time de Beauvoir was writing women ALREADY had the vote, and women were ALREADY being admitted into universities. Women have been allowed in universities in various degrees since the 1880’s. The specific claim was made that catsix wouldn’t have been able to go to university without the effort of modern feminists. That claim is clearly false, since many of the modern feminists were themselves university educated, and in more than one case were even allowed to teach in unversities as well. Like many of the so-called advances of the modern feminist movement the admission of women into universities happened before the rise of modern feminism.
Joey Jo Jo
catsix, sweetie, you’re shitting me, right? You pointed out instances of a few people saying or doing stupid things.
You understand the history of feminism like Tom Cruise understands the history of psychiatry.
Actually, I believe the comment was that men not women, tend to occupy more spaces on the outer extremes of the bell curve in regards to insantity, genius, retardation etc.
It wasn’t clearly stated initially, and another poster misunderstood and attempted to cite women’s poverty to refute the bell-curve statement.
As you were.
I am with you there. What the feminists did, however, was provide the right wing spin machine with a huge supply of tiny kernels of truth from which they spun their lies. Frex, take “All sex is rape” which of course Dworkin never said. Here’s Dworkin’s response to that attribution, from the Wikipedia entry about her:
See, Dworkin clearly denies ever having said it, but further down she’s saying things like “Since the paradigm for sex has been one of conquest, possession and violation …” I can just see Bill O’Reilly smirking and saying, “In other words, sex is rape!” She can’t even deny the slander without giving her opponents grounds for repeating it.
Whether or not feminists as a whole were asking for it, they surely got it. A quick and unequivocal denial by NOW and other feminists organizations of that whole “men are rapists” meme would have been a Very Good Thing, but I don’t think any such disavowal was ever forthcoming, and if it did come, it came kinda late.
Well, it was a boneheaded play, politically speaking, just as it would be boneheaded for the Dems to run Barney Frank or an avowed atheist for President. It added credence to right-wing smears of feminism that it was led by lesbians – man-hating lesbians. NOW members have a right to elect whomever they want as president of their organization, of course, but jeebus, THAT was such an obvious dumbass move, politically speaking.
NOW and other feminists haven’t done a particularly skillful job of distancing themselves from these “fringe” types. And frankly, back in the 80s, I don’t know if Dworkin and MacKinnon could rightly be described as on the “fringe” of politically active feminists.
Catsix, would you characterize yourself as a libertarian, politically speaking?
Oh, just to clarify the ‘bell-curve’ argument is a physiological one, not sociological. The [extremely simplified] premise is that males have less redundancy/stability built into their makeup. Women have two X chromosomes which can substitute for each other and thus push them more towards the middle. Men have only one X and a Y and thus have more varience without that redundancy skew farther towards the extremes of the bell-curve. The Y chromosome becomes the “x-factor”
As far as I know, this argument has nothing to do with explanations for poverty levels of women vs men.