That is correct and it is also the reason that I don’t subscribe to feminism or label myself as one in general even though I have two daughters that I would kill for. There is a general problem with a term that can mean a wide range of things to different audiences. It means that it isn’t a good term in either the political or social sense because it doesn’t give any real information on its own. People that simply want better accommodations for working mothers are not the same as the ones that believe all heterosexual sex is rape yet they are bundled under the same umbrella for no good reason at all.
Words have (or at least should have real meaning). Any Marketing 101 student knows that. A large majority of reasonable feminists claim that they simply want equal rights for both men and women alike. That may be true but it also forces me to ask why not go for a name change if that is really true? You could have an ‘equalist’ movement that attracts moderates of all sexes and genders and focus on those, well, equally. That wouldn’t just be a superficial and cosmetic change. I am talking about a movement that truly embraces those ideals and rejects the fringe crazies on both sides aggressively. I don’t see that in any branch of feminism now although certain individuals believe it.
If equality is truly the goal, I also do not understand why the feminine aspects are emphasized and the masculine aspects are completely ignored. The name itself suggests acknowledgement that both exist yet one is desirable and the other is evil that needs to be suppressed or at least mitigated. I cannot buy into that. Stereotypical feminine traits have their place but so do masculine ones. It is also a false dichotomy. Some of the most fringe female feminists are more stereotypically masculine than I will ever be as a male.
In summary, the rhetoric does not match the actual goals or thoughts of the actual subgroups that make up the movement. Those subgroups are too different to be bundled into one umbrella term. Everyone would be better off if the moderate subgroups created a more mainstream term like ‘equalists’ and broke off from all the other fringe positions. That would add clarity to what is actually desired by each subgroup and also be much more politically and socially effective.
*** I was flattered that one of my posts similar to this one actually got picked up by a feminist blog according to a Google search and wasn’t immediately dismissed.
There is a “yes means yes” bill before the California state legislature which requires colleges and universities to require explicit permission from a potential partner for each and every step of a sexual encounter. A person (I’m sure the bill doesn’t use pronouns) can be arrested for attempted rape if they don’t get a “yes” to a kiss, a touch, or any further steps of an encounter. Lack of a “no” is not consent.
The label “Feminist” on its own holds more vague meaning, as they are many sectors and branches of Feminism as a whole, all of which hold different ideals and opinions on controversial topics or believe in different strategies as means of gaining equality.
That being said, it can also be quite counterproductive to criticize Feminism as a whole or “Mainstream Feminism”, unless you’re just a misogynist.
I’m aghast to understand this. If the problem is that one can rarely prove he or she said no to a sexual encounter, how does passing a law that assumes every sexual encounter is rape outside of (still virtually impossible) proof of consent any kind of reasonable solution?
It seems like someone with no idea how to craft law, who is rationally disconnected from the world, drew up some garbage that has a nice ring to it (“yes means yes”).
*Ma’am would you please sign on the dotted line so I can remove your brassiere from your bosom? And don’t forget to initial here, and also here, so I can use my finger to vaginally stimulate you. *
That article says a number of colleges (including Berkeley) already have such policies. What practical difference does this make? It seems like you’re still going to get into the same arguments of “you consented” “no I didn’t”. Does anyone have any examples of how any investigations have gone differently because of policies like this?
Feminism in its original meaning is great. Feminism as it is understood in its third iterations is rubbish. The whole Tumbler / College – feminism, hogwash. Rape culture, check-your-privilege, gender deconstruction, yap yap. Rubbish from start to end.
For me there is a 100% overlap between feminism and liberalism. Anything that claims to be feminism which cannot also be classified as liberalism is not feminism. And probably rubbish.
“Feminism” has an outstanding track-record, but it’s getting dated, imho, and in the information age, where anyone can express their opinion, it’s message and purpose got too deluded. What are other people’s opinion’s on this?
I kind of like what you’re saying.
Before I asked if men tend to get harsher punishments for committing the same crime. It seems to me they do, but perhaps I’m mistaken? Could anyone answer this?
And its the reason I insist on being a feminist - I believe all women are worthy of being treated with respect and dignity. To say I’m not a feminist implies that I don’t believe that.
I may believe or be a lot of other things - I might be pro-choice or anti-porn, I might be a man hater or a man lover. I could be a lesbian, straight or bi. I could be male or female - but the core is that I think women should be treated with respect and dignity.
I know some people prefer other words for that - humanist is another I’ve heard used that way (though humanist tends to have atheist connotations to me), but the one that focuses on WOMEN as people is feminist.
And I’m not sure I’m for equality - equality is something different to me. I don’t think women should be firefighters at the same rate as men - women who meet the qualifications and have the desire shouldn’t be turned down because they are women - but very few women are going to meet the qualifications and have the desire. To me, equality gets into issues like that. I’m more for fair than equal.
Well, as far as I know, you have to meet physical requirements to be a firefighter. I knew of a female firefighter once. She said, that of course, there should be standards. Does that mean it’s not “equal”?
I know what he/said. I don’t think it falls under “fairness”, but not “equality”,
Unless anyone’s under the impression that when we talk about “equal” we mean that there literally has to be exactly as many female firefighters, or the same amount of male flight attendants, nurses, and pre-school caretakers.
“Equal” should mean everyone’s considered, go with the most qualified.
Perhaps it’s easy for me to say; I’ve worked where the environment was half female, (if not a little more). There were no gender wars. Everyone, including me, was respected. I can’t HONESTLY say that the “best boss” I ever had was a woman. That tittle belongs to a man with the patients of a saint. I’ve seen some AMAZING female leaders before, bosses and co-workers.
So yeah, I think this country has probably been negatively effected by not having qualified women in big leadership positions. It’s not for the lack of qualified women, I’m sure.
The reason advertisers target women in ads for cleaning products is because research has found that most of those products are purchased by women. It’s not about sexism so much as economics. If targeting men worked, they’d do it. They don’t care about gender roles, they care about making money.
There are three cases for - example - firefighters.
One - there are standards, they are so difficult that only men can make them, and one of the unwritten standards is “be a man.” Not fair, nor equal.
Two - There are standards, they make sense for the industry - and while they are difficult to achieve for most women due to things like having to carry heavy oxygen tanks, the requirements make sense for the job. Fair.
Three - We lower the standards in such a way that a relatively fit woman could make the standards because “we need more women firefighters.” The standards start getting to the point that they are lower than the job really requires for safety - equal - a man and a woman have an equal chance of becoming firefighters Too often, this is what we start arguing for when we start arguing ‘equal.’
I recently said this in the thread about Apple and minorities in their workforce - women should not be DISCOURAGED from pursuing STEM careers, but if the idea is for women’s participation in these fields to be proportionally equal to men’s - that implies that their interest is the same as men’s. Getting to that number is really only sensible if women WANT to pursue STEM jobs in equal proportions as men do. And they might - we might be actively discouraging our young women from STEM roles. But its just as likely that the 30 years we’ve been trying to encourage it we’ve had less than ideal success is because women aren’t as interested in pursuing those roles.
ETA: Equal implies a mathematical equation that can be measured, and comes out with a binary true/false - equal or not equal. I think gender and gender issues are FAR more complex than that.
There is also equality in the sense that the U.S. Constitution uses it. I don’t see many people in this thread arguing for equality of outcomes although plenty of people in general, including some branches of feminism, aim for exactly that. They see any imbalance of numbers as a systemic failure that needs to be corrected rather than the result of personal preferences. I think what most people here are advocating is equality of opportunity (I know I am).
Equality of outcomes is problematic when viewed on a macro scale. One of the most commonly cited statistics that feminists use is that women make cents on the dollar for the exact same job as a man. That is surprisingly hard to prove because there are other factors involved like choice of job, years of experience and the number of work hours. It is demonstrably false, at least to the extent it is presented, when you are talking about a men and women that work in the exact same job and have the same qualifications. The government and companies don’t have two separate pay scales that use to determine a person’s wages and benefits.
OTOH, women are graduating college at a much higher rate than men today and are about to make up the majority of graduates in traditionally higher paying and status professional fields like law and medicine. Should we start new affirmative action programs to encourage young men to finish college? I say no. Many obviously have the ability and there are no obvious obstacles in their path other than themselves. It doesn’t matter what the numbers are as long as that stays true. That applies to both sexes in all endeavours as far as I am concerned.
I don’t know that I’d apply affirmative action policies for men, but I think it’s fair to ask if K-12 teaching methods are favoring girls’ learning styles over boys’, or that boys aren’t receiving as much encouragement in their academic pursuits. I heard the opposite discussions in decades past, from people trying to get more women to attend college.
But see, for the life of me, I can’t think of a reason why this would be so that doesn’t involve men being hostile and/or discouraging. I mean, unless you want to argue that something in the feminine brain or hormones makes them not like those fields as much, what else is there?
Women as a whole are physiologically predisposed toward social, communicative activities. Males as a whole are much more accepting of isolationist activities like sitting in a library all night studying science textbooks.
From an evolutionary perspective, women stayed in groups to protect their offspring from predators. Men went off to hunt and provide for their families.
(This is the idea behind the speech the Harvard president gave where he pointed to innate differences between the genders in the scientific fields. His timing was atrocious and he lost his job for it, though he wasn’t necessarily “wrong”)
Cite? Is this like Newt Gingrich’s ‘women evolved to sit at home while men evolved to hunt giraffes’? Cue some unfalsifiable, panadaptational evo-psych in 3, 2, 1…
He wasn’t necessarily right, either. Considering the vast range of traditional gender roles in various cultures, it seems much more likely that gender roles are derived from cultural and societal norms rather than biology.