What does Feminism mean to you? Calling all dopers.. the more the merrier..

Great Debates
41

“…sometimes men have been their own worst enemies by not fighting for custody.”

This is so true. To get told by a male judge that the woman gets the children unless “you prove she is a substandard mother”.

How about I prove I am a great DAD and you get her to prove me wrong?

I pretty much agree with the general premise of laws being indiscriminatory. They are for the most part. What you will have trouble with even today is the thought process of many many people.

You can’t change a person’s beliefs solely because you say it’s “this way not that way” Kinda like a male judge saying the children need to be with their mother.

Pure Horse Shyte.

42

In my experince, Aangelica, there is a limited subset of people to whom feminist and bitch are synonomous. Though I have had people say “what are you, some sort of feminist?”

43

I’ve heard about this women make 76% as much as men fact before and one thing puzzles me…

…when I try to hire for my department and I find an equivalant man and woman for the position, I tried to go for the woman because she should be just as good but cheaper. If the market dictates a salary of $40,000 for a man, I should be able to get the woman for about $30,000. A deal!

The problem is that when I try to do this (heck, even offer $32,000 which should be a goodly sum above average for her) she turns me down. It turns out I have to offer her about $40,000 to get her.

What is going on!!!

Where are these smart females settling for 76%? At 76% my department will be exclusively female…guaranteed.

44

Just a few comments to the debate… since I have no idea to add about the posters (I can’t visualize something for it).

  • Men are getting less and less academic degrees than women every year. Men have worse grades too. (USA) Soon men might need help catching up or diferent approach when being taught.

  • Women in my experience tend to be more critical of other women and liberal atitudes than men. Men might have a lot of chauvinistic atitudes left… but a lot of women are still holding back equality and keeping old fashioned mentalities.

    BTW: I really would like to see women treated as equal… having had 70% of my bosses being women its quite normal to see women as being profesional and equal of any man. I think both sexes will have a lot to gain when this equality exists not only job wise… but in regard to sexuality, family and life.

45

But do most people really think men and women are equal in every way? I don’t think they do, and I don’t think they are. To me, a lot of feminists want equality in all the good areas and none of the bad. That’s not to say that equality id a noble goal, just that the innate differences between the sexes make it impractical in many ways.

46

Many of the above posts fail to recognize (or at least to mention) that there are at least two versions of feminism: the one to which most reasonable people subscribe – respect for each sex, equality of opportunity, same pay for the same work (with a few quibbles about time-in-service, etc.), positive role models, etc., etc.

But, it has to be said that there is a wing of the feminist movement which can only be described as Lunatic Fringe. That this group has done such a good job of giving “feminism” a bad name is the reason that so many people find it necessary to say things like “I no longer consider myself a feminist”.

There are, of course, extremists in every movement. But I can think of few other mass movements where the extremists have managed to make the public identify their face with the face of the movement to the detriment of the mainstream movement overall.

47

Conservative Christians
Gay Men (the buttless chap wearing promiscious dress-as-nuns-for-the-Gay-Pride-parade type )
Fundamentalist Muslims
Gun Nuts
Anti Gun Nuts
Rabid Pro-Lifers
…

48

Gamers.

49

Feminism is getting equality and parity with men in all possible aspects of life while making white male priviledge and patriarchal thinking a thing of the past.

It is not about supremacy but equality.

Not superiority but parity.

50

Hey, don’t make me bring my +1 light hammer of Argumentative Burst over there!

Actually, the RPG messageboard I hang out on a lot has semiannual threads that pop up about “Do you let men play women in your games?” and the threads invariably get closed down due to the huge arguments that erupt between the feminists and the . . . um, I just realized I should probably be careful how I characterize the opposition . . . the non-feminists.

As far as I’m concerned, feminism is all about allowing people to make choices free of other folks’ gender preconceptions. And that means if I want to play a little girl*, nobody should stop me.

Daniel

  • In my defense, she’d lived for centuries in a hallucination of hell and specialized in working death-magic with her long, animated, rune-encrusted fingernails.
51

Gamers? What do you mean, there’s supposed to be something wrong with gamers??? I’ll smite you with a fireball, chop you up in small pieces with my + 2 longsword and feed the charred pieces to a rabid red dragon for that, you slandering offspring of a diseased hobgoblin!!! :mad:

(wanders off, muttering angrily to myself)
On a more serious note, feminists get a lot of help in maintaining a bad reputation. Rabid feminists are good news. An example: There was a minor controversy in my town a few years ago, about a new statue on the main street chock full of symbolism fitting the gender roles of the 1950s. Our biggest local newspaper ran a story about how a hardcore feminist group, Ottar, was up in arms about the statue. The (not very subtle) subtext to the story was “look at these ridiculous feminists who froth about their mouths on this trival issue”. But when reading a follow up story a few days later, I realised that the newspaper had contacted Ottar, asked for a comment, and got: “Well, we don’t like that statue, but it’s not a big deal. We’ve got more important things to work on.”

52

(Hmpfh - I line up a perfect attack and get beat on the initiative roll by Left Hand of Dorkness. Ah, well, I see your little girl and raise with a bisexual shapeshifter who could change gender at will :wink: )

53

Sneak attack! Sneak attack!
Daniel

54

I believe that each person should be treated as an individual, and not as a more or less differentiated instance of a gender. I believe that every person should be free to choose what path in life that suits them best, unhindered by gender roles imposed by society. I believe that “male” and “female” should not be recognized by the state as meningful categories by which to legaly differentiate people. I believe a number of other things along those lines.

And I am not a feminist.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that I do not identify as a feminist, I do not identify with the word, or with the subset of humanity that consists of those who do consider themselves feminists.

Why not?

The opinions I listed above lead me to take certain stances on various gender-related issues (not to mention, stances on which issues are gender-related and which are not - that’s a gender-related issue in and of itself!). Some people agree with my stances, others disagree. And I have not noticed that self-identified feminists are more likely to agree with me than society in general.

And that’s the point of using a term to describe oneself, after all: to communicate something about yourself, to say “I’m like them” or “I agree with them”.
But I don’t agree with “them” in this case. In fact, it is possible to have opinions that are as far removed from my own as is possible, while nevertheless remaining within the general notion of “feminist”; just take your average stereotypical man-hating “feminazi”, who thinks the ideal society would be a strict matriarchy where all power is held by women, and who laughs gleefully every time a man is discriminated against. If she’s a feminist, and I’m a feminist, then the term is meaningless, as it can’t even distinguish between polar opposites.

So I’m not a feminist. What, then, is a feminist? What is feminism?

Common definitions include “opposition to sexism” and “the radical belief that women are people too”. It should come as no surprise that I disagree with these definitions. Logic requires me to, actually: if either definition was correct, I would be a feminist, and I’m not, so they aren’t.
Simplistic, oh so positive, how-could-anyone-ever-disagree definitions like the ones above tend to remind me of the claim that Christianity is simply about treating your neighbour with love in your heart. Half a second’s thought can give you a counterexample.
One can define the term however one likes, of course, but what then is to stop me from deciding that feminists are precisely those who fit the stereotype I described above, and then go on my merry way claiming that all feminists are evil sexists bent on oppressing us all?
No, in order to have a useful definition, we need to leave the propaganda behind and try to come up with a definition that actually fits the people we’re talking about (and which doesn’t include anyone it shouldn’t).

And that’s the difficult bit, of course. Trying to come up with an abstract definition of a preexisting group. How would you define the group of numbers that includes two, three, four, five and seven, and no others? “The set of prime numbers less than ten, and four”? It’s true, but it doesn’t say anything useful about them.

(We’re getting to the bit where I get really critical of feminism now.)

One would like to find a set of views that are defining for feminism, such that all of those who have those views are feminists, and all feminist have those views. But I don’t think there is any such set of views, because feminism is more about what words you use to assert your opinons, than about what those opinions actually are. A person who uses the word “patriarchy” unsarcastically can safely be assumed to be a feminist, while someone talking about “feminazis” is very unlikely to be.
That’s not to say that the term can include absolutely any views; just most. A feminist is unlikely to be of the explicit belief that women are inferior to men. Being in favour of equality isn’t a requirement, though. Being opposed to sexism is certainly not a requirement. Once you get outside of the absolutely trivial, you can find a counterexample to pretty much any proposed definition, and those few trivial things aren’t good enough, since they include numerous people noone in their right mind would consider a feminist.
And that’s because “feminism” is three-quarters group marker to one quarter ideology.

So I guess the answer to the question in the thread title is “not much”.

55

Well, as a guy, and fairly young (26) I can say that while I would probably be described as a feminist, I tend not to label myself as such because today, with the statutory leveling between the sexes, feminism has increasingly become a pulpit for those that not only want equity between the sexes, but ascribe superiority to the feminine mystique, or assume that women should be be to do whatever they’d like without consequences. If I don’t subscribe to that for men, why would I do so for women?

As for so many of the societal issues that feminist laws can’t address, I have to lay some of the blame, if blame there is, at the feet of women. Once we got past the point where women could choose their own husbands, they waived any right to get upset over unequal help domestically. Want a man that will pull his weight at home? Then marry one that will. If the guys that felt that women were not full people couldn’t get laid or couldn’t get married, then they wouldn’t exist.

And yes, i know that there has been indoctrination over the centuries, and that habits are hard to get out of on both sides, or else I’d be a lot more indignant about it.

56

Rock On, Zoe. My husband was ruined by his mother with regard to what I’m expected to do for him. She’ll ask me what I’m making for dinner, and I say I don’t feel like cooking. Loooooooong silence. It’s my responsibility to buy the birthday cards (and remember all the birthdays!) for his family. All he does is cat shit duty and garbage. The rest of the responsibility of maintaining the household falls on me. I balance the checkbook, pay the bills, do the laundry, shopping, cleaning, cooking, internet research, yardwork, and I make more money than him. He really has no idea how this is chipping away at us. I bring it up, and I’m a bitch. In the last 4 months, he’s loaded the dishwasher once and vacuumed once. I’m fucking tired of it. DO I SOUND BITTER???

57

This comes closest to what feminism means to me. I agree with others that it is action to promote the equality of the sexes, and the ability to look past singular views of what roles a woman or a man should play. A woman can be both a saintly mother and a devil in bed, and it’s OK. She can be a nurturing wife and a driven career woman at the same time. She can be herself, instead of what other people think she should be. I think a side-effect is that men’s roles are more flexible, too.

I think it has morphed into this from the initial stages of just getting the basics down like the right to vote, right to equal pay (still some work to go there), and the legal right to say “no” to sex.

I call myself a feminist based on my definition of feminism.

58

Thanks for clarifying which part of my statement you found debatable, uglybeech. As you said, that would be drifting off-topic, so we’ll agree to disagree and perhaps meet in another thread where it won’t be off-topic, one day :slight_smile:

Sofis explained exactly how I feel about the term, what it means to me and why I don’t self-identify as a feminist.

Kalhoun, are you only venting, or do you want to change the dynamics in your relationship?

59

Feminism to me is a quick asshole detector whenever someone whips out the usual crap. “Feminists hate men. Feminists are hairy-legged man-hating ball busters.” “Women are qual now, so what’s the big deal?” “Andrea Dworkin said this. Andrea Dworkin said that. Feminists believe in censorship.”

I grew up during the Seventies, so I remember not being allowed to wear pants to school in winter, the way girls got treated by ‘boys will be boys’ and so forth. I was blue collar then and I’m blue collar now. A lot of the things that have changed for the priveleged educated women have not changed for me or women like me.

There’s a lot of hostility to feminism and feminists out there. I find that thanks to the SDMB if I ask them for a cite those people will either bluster–because they don’t have one—or talk about somebody rediculous. So I know what I’m dealing with.

It’s always been a really simple concept. Applying it to a world designed by men for men, though, is not easy.

A few years back I had a kid in front of me in the chow hall line and he abruptly turned and tried to stick his hands between my legs–in front of everybody. Nobody blinked an eye. “Knock it off!”

“Why?”

He wanted me to provide justification for why he couldn’t do what he wanted to me. I don’t think I ever need to do that. I think that just be being human I have the right to expect that guys do not have that right.

60

As I remember it, people talked about “feminism” several years after the start of…

The Women’s Liberation Movement

–which nobody talks about anymore. Why was the vision of “women’s liberation” replaced by a vague, mushy “ism”?