I think the problem (or “problem” - I’m not hugely bothered by it) is the usage of the word “feminist”. It’s all good and well to claim that a feminist is someone who is opposed to sexism and in favour of equality (or “the radical notion that women are people”, which frankly seems to be a definition whose main purpose is demonizing people who don’t consdider themselves to be feminists), but if you don’t use the word to actually mean that, then the word won’t mean that. If one uses “feminist” to (for example) refer to people who think that the proper way of behaving or dressing is dependent on one’s sex (as you just did in the post I’m quoting), then the stated definition is contradicted, and weakened.
Yes, for example throughout the entire history of the world it has been quite easy to point to the fact that being forced to kill and be mutilated in wars was an opportunities and privilege :rolleyes: reserved only for men.
To suggest that it’s only in todays world that men get the shitty end of the stick shows a gross misundertsanding of history. An educated person could point to examples of times and areas at any stage of history where women have had opportunities and privileges availble to them that men did not have.
Religious fundies are the groups I point my finger at who are actively determined to get women back in the kitchen. The Christian, Hindu, and Islamic fundies are the worst at this. (Jewish fundies seem more concerned with grabbing land in the Occupied Territories rather than rolling back women’s rights.)
I don’t engage these groups in direct debate much. Rather, it’s a generally diffused attitude that I keep encountering that seems to come out of the woodwork whenever I express a feminist point of view. I feel that there’s even more of a backlash attitude nowadays than when Faludi wrote her book.
Using the word “feminism” to describe “in support of equality” implies that supporting equality is a feminine trait. It is a divisive term from the very start and people who continue to fight for that disingenuous definition are doomed, rightfully, to fail.
That’s like saying using the term “children’s rights” or “children’s liberation” to describe “in support of equality” implies that supporting equality is a childish trait.
Kindly note:
a) If, hypothetically speaking, it had never really occurred to you that children are a class of people who are kept unequal to adults by law, cultural practice, and plain old force, then saying “I support equality” would not enlighten you. Saying “children’s lib” immediately identifies a problem area, an area of inequality. And that remains true even if you end up concluding that the inequality of children and adults is “natural”, not political, and that children should not, in fact, have equal rights with adults under the law or receive the same treatment and respect as adults, etc etc.
b) “Feminine”, like “childish”, is a loaded term to the folks advocating equality in these matters. In both cases, the conventional use is not merely a denotative, straightforward association of a trait with a population but also has been imbued with value judgments.
c) On the other hand, if a male were to feel excluded by the connotation that valuing equality is a womanly trait, as if it implied that men would not value equality, then gee, doesn’t that make an excellent illustration of the problems with using “men” and “mankind” and the supposedly generic “he” to refer to human traits and human values?
Throughout most of history, for most classes of men and women, you would be at least somewhat better off as an individual being coerced into participating in war than relegated to the social status of women.
War, albeit a gamble that you don’t get crippled or killed, used to be an opportunity for men to plunder and personally enrich themselves, also aggrandize themselves with the concept of “glory,” prestige, and sometimes political power, earned through prowess at violence. In days of old when knights were bold.
The outspoken Canadian feminist Sunera Thobani caught a lot of shit for opposing the attack on Afghanistan in 2001. Her main point was a valid one: Wartime tends to result in violence being brought home to women and children domestically, when men become hardened to violence abroad. I haven’t forgotten the killing spree by veteran John Muhammad that terrorized my area three years ago. His ex-wife says he was gunning for her. I am not knocking veterans by saying this. I respect those who have honorably served their country. I’m saying that getting into wars increases the likelihood of this problem by spreading more violence around. I have looked into the eyes of a veteran who was mentally unhinged as a result of being ordered to kill a child in Vietnam, and it was the most disturbing moment of my life.
It was also an opportunity to force other men to do the actual fighting for you, with you getting the political power and riches, and them getting - well, likely maimed, crippled, killed, or at the very least giving up years of their lives.
It was sometimes also an opportunity to protect women and children at the cost of men’s lives.
I think you’re making the mistake of assuming that since political, military, and religious leaders were largely men, that men as a whole benefitted from their rule. I’m open to the possibility that this was the case, but I have as yet seen no evidence to support it as a general rule.
As to the OP, if someone tells me that they are a feminist, I generally tend to assume that they mean they are for the legal and social equality of women and men. However, I often find that I am incorrect. I figure it’s best to give people the benefit of the doubt though.
Talking of opportunities, can anyone confirm the statistic that men (not sure where: in the US, in the industrialised world generally?) get the opportunity for 95% of all work-related deaths? Any idea whether this figure has increased or decreased historically?
I mean, I know that one instance is that dying in a collapsing coal-mine - or indeed, living through a coal-mining career to face a short retirement with hideously diseased lungs - has been one of the privileges that selfish men have historically grabbed for themselves. There’s deep-sea fishing too. Not sure how things shape up otherwise. Anyone?
Excuse the multi-post, but I had a bit of a think about this and now I think I’m starting to steam a little. Why does feminism have an ugly name? Because of writers like this who bang on as if the true victims of war were the women and children who “tend” to have violence brought home to them by men who have “become hardened to violence abroad”.
Others might think that men who habitually take out their hardening on women and children are statistically rare compared to the other victims of war – you know, the poor bastards trapped in a floating coffin at thirty thousand feet, or drowning before they could even set foot on the beaches at Normandy, or half-fried in a sea of burning gasoline before dying of exposure in the mid-Atlantic, or blown to doll-rags while snagged on the barbed wire, or gassed like rats in the trenches on the Somme. All in the name of the “opportunity to plunder and personally enrich themselves, also aggrandize themselves with the concept of ‘glory’, prestige, and sometimes political power, earned through prowess at violence”? All in the name of keeping women and children safe, or avoiding the shame of having a white feather stuck on them.
Eh… “floating coffin” = “flaming coffin” of course. Sometimes spellcheck wouldn’t help even if I did bother to use it. :smack:
As soon as you say “feminism”, you get a certain type of man coming in and telling the feminists what’s wrong with feminism and how tough men have it. Well, yeah, feminism has an image problem, and guys have it tough too. So start “masculinism” or something, liberate yourselves from the macho/wuss dichotomy in the way that women are trying to get away from the virgin/whore dichotomy. If you want to liberate men, or even all people, from stereotypes and unfair treatment then that’s great: let me know what you’re doing about it, and this feminist will gladly give you a hand.
But going to a bunch of women who are tired of being told how to live by a bunch of men, and telling them what they’re doing wrong and how they ought to fix it and how they’re ignoring your problems… well, how successful do you think that will be? Feminists (both male and female) will have to sort it out without the dubious benefit of lectures from you.
My favourite definition of feminism is this article from Tomato Nation: Yes, You Are. If people have got some weird definition of what it means to be a feminist, tell them to go look it up in the dictionary, and carry on living as a feminist while they figure it out.
If you ask a conservative what conservatives want, you’ll likely hear about things such as freedom, and a strong economy, and fighting terrorism, and other things no sane person could disagree with. You ask people of other political groupings what they’re all about, and you’ll get similarly ridiculously positive descriptions.
I find it interesting how many feminists actually seem to expect people to accept “feminist == anti-sexist” as an indisputable truth handed down from God Almighty.
Well, but of course. And therefore, anything “a certain type of man” says can be disregarded because he’s just saying the kind of things “a certain type of man” would say. How’d ya know he’s “a certain type of man”? Well, just listen to those things he’s saying. That’s one nice tight system of logic you have there, sheila.
Much obliged. When I get the inclination to get off my fat Pommie behind, which is seldom, I sometimes call BS on BS statements that persons of a certain persuasion make about men, about history, that kinda thing. You maybe think you could help me out a little, as advertised?
Day I meet a bunch of women who’re being told how to live by a bunch of men, I’ll be sure to remember your advice. Only, y’know that whole BS-calling thing I was just now talking about? Are you backing out on me already?
I want those five minutes of my life back. Seriously, I can get all the glurge I want without needing to be linked to it. Regrettably, I have to get my definition of feminist not only from the dictionary, but from people who attach the label to themselves, or get it attached to them by, say, book publishers who list 'em under “Gender Studies” or university departments who give 'em chairs in the same, and so on. And if they don’t fit the dictionary definition, or tomatonation’s either, shouldn’t it concern you that they’re pissing in your pool? I mean, you’re the one who wants to swim in it.
So …
Did feminist become an insult because of[ol]
[li]A few visible hardcore feminists who perverted the concept from a freedom of choice to one of only the choices that they make are okay, hairy legged and earning lots of toaster ovens,[/li][li]squabbles and name calling within the feminist movement, each believing that the others are not the right sort of feminist[/li][li]Rove like labelling of the movement by those who are for women in more subservient roles?[/li][/ol]
And on the aside, Johanna, when you state that
I can tell you that some who work with the Orthodox community would have a very different opinion. “Greater Israel” is an issue to only a small group of religious fundamentalists in Israel, and some interested in the concept are as secular as any other Israeli. Many Israeli Orthodox are much more interested in institutionalizing theocratic elements to Isaeli government. Elsewhere in the world the Orthodox are not too dissimilar to other religious fundamentalists, defined roles for men and women within their functional worlds and voting for religious conservative values (many Orthodox supported Bush for that reason).
The definition of “feminist” in popular discourse is one of those terms which has changed over time. Part of this is due to those who aren’t feminsts; part of it is due to those who are.
The old Ms. messageboards are no longer extant, or I would cite them as an example of what a highly vocal subset of the feminist movement would insist “feminism” has to be.
Part of it, as I said, is because (some) anti-feminists caricature femisists as hairy-legged, man-hating lesbian socialists. The other part is because (some) feminists will insist on the “you can’t be a feminist unless…” syndrome. “You can’t be a feminist unless you support abortion. You can’t be a feminist if you voted for Bush. You can’t be a feminist unless you believe Anita Hill and disbelieve Kathleen Wiley”. And so on.
And thus they caricature themselves.
They aren’t all that way. But those that are tend to be more strident about it than everyone else.
Regards,
Shodan
Alternatively, since the guys in the next village/duchy/kingdom/empire were going to get themselves hopped up to come and commit rapine and plunder, (with a sufficient amount of testosterone to encourage them in that behavior), you should note that the women were compelled to refrain from learning defensive techniques to prevent the same rapine and plunder on themselves.
No, you should note that societies that didn’t leave the fighting to the sex that came the better-equipped for it got out-competed and driven to the wall. Good grief, now I’m having to advance basic Darwinistic arguments.
Or that the women of the losing side might possibly be dragged off to a fate worse than death, but were in with a chance at living through it. 'Tall depends whether you think it’s crueller to be raped and pillaged by a hairy Viking with an enormous chopper, or simply split from neck to crotch with it for being fool enough to lift a weapon against him. I daresay, in antiquity, various approaches got tried, and the one that was least likely to get tribes wiped out was the one that persisted.
I don’t think that this whole “but men died in battle” argument is as relavent to the discussion as you think it is. Yes, men died in battle while women stayed home, but that has nothing to do with their power in society. Women died in childbirth, but that, too, has nothing to do with which gender was more “privileged.” For most of history, and in large parts of the world today, BOTH sexes got the shitty end of the stick, simply because life was pretty shitty before indoor plumbing.
I recently did quite a bit of reading about human sexuality. Helen Fisher states in her book Anatomy of Love that societies can be gender-equal or patriarchal, but matriarchies don’t exist. Women may have greater power or influence in some aspects of society, but the feminist claims of early matriarchies are false. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, I would be very interested in it.
I don’t know about “an insult”, but this is why the label kicked me out. I grew up in a time and place where choosing to be home-and-family focused was referred to and treated as a betrayal of feminism or a failure to “reach full potential as a woman” or failure to properly appreciate what the foremothers have done. The only allowed reason for someone wanting to make that choice was brainwashing – unless the person choosing it was male.
A friend of mine who had a similar experience (I think she’s older than me, and on the other side of the Atlantic) has gotten frustrated since her daughter was born with the tacit assumption that she’s just waiting around for the right moment to claw her way back into the corporate heirarchy. When she corrects them and declares her intent to remain a stay-at-home-mom she gets comments about how she’s wasting herself, and isn’t she a feminist?
There’s this gap between the intellectual knowledge of what other people use the word to mean and what it would mean to me to use it to refer to myself.
I do think my friend who was raised to be a good feminist by a mother who was in the “men can’t be feminists” camp (which I didn’t encounter until I was an adult) is worse off on the label-comfort front than I am, though; his parental relationship got hacked up pretty bad when he went on T. . .