Women Against Feminism

[Jack_of_Words]

@iiandyiiii

I’m a feminist, and my feminism matches pretty closely to the feminism of my friends, family, and most feminists I read about. It doesn’t match at all LinusK’s or Jack of Words description of feminism.

Jews are unlikely to believe that Jew-critics have a more accurate picture of Judaism than Jews. Feminists are unlikely to believe that feminist-critics have a more accurate picture of feminism than feminists.

Another confirmation that feminism has risen (or sunk) to the status of a religion in the minds of its adherents. Irrational beliefs held as ‘revealed truths’ that cannot be challenged - indeed, to challenge them is to confirm their ‘truth’ in the minds of the faithful.

I do think Islam (or Mormonism) would be the better analogy though. Certainly, the christian primary texts urge christians to proselytise, but most don’t go out of their way to do that. Most muslims I’ve met don’t either, but the primary text is more forceful in its message of conversion, while the mormons will eventually baptise you even after death.

[LinusK]

@BrightSunshine

I’m a feminist who engages in at least one issue. My issue is the low number of women in STEM fields. I engage in outreach activity geared towards girls. Are you calling me detestable and despicable?

Of course not.

Butgirls are doing better academically, across the board:

Campuses are now nearly 60 percent female, with women earning 170,000 more bachelor degrees each year than men. Women are streaming into business schools and medical schools, and will be the majority at the nation’s law schools.

From Slate:

“By eighth grade,” Leonhardt reports, “48 percent of girls receive a mix of A’s and B’s or better. Only 31 percent of boys do.” In light of this, it’s no surprise that women make up 57 percent of college students, 67 percent of college graduates, and 70 percent of university valedictorians…

According to MIT professor David H. Autor, a decline in two-parent households during the past 40 years has disproportionately shaken young boys, who “fare particularly poorly” without fathers… “today’s education system fails to acknowledge the profound differences between boys and girls,” forcing boys “to sit still for hours every day and [providing] them with few role models in front of the classroom.”

Women are currently getting more associate’s degrees, more bachelor’s degree’s, more master’s degree’s, and more doctor’s degrees. Source.

So engaging in outreach geared toward girls is great. I’m not sure it’s girls who need it, though.

[Kimstu]

@Jack_of_Words

@iiandyiiii

I’m a feminist, and my feminism matches pretty closely to the feminism of my friends, family, and most feminists I read about. It doesn’t match at all LinusK’s or Jack of Words description of feminism.

Jews are unlikely to believe that Jew-critics have a more accurate picture of Judaism than Jews. Feminists are unlikely to believe that feminist-critics have a more accurate picture of feminism than feminists.

Another confirmation that feminism has risen (or sunk) to the status of a religion in the minds of its adherents. Irrational beliefs held as ‘revealed truths’ that cannot be challenged - indeed, to challenge them is to confirm their ‘truth’ in the minds of the faithful.

What? Your intepretation of iiandyiiii’s remark doesn’t make any sense. He’s not talking about whether or not a certain set of ideas is the ‘truth’: he’s talking about the importance of accurately describing what that set of ideas actually claims.

Never mind whether or not feminist principles count as any kind of ‘revealed truth’: the point here is that antifeminists like you and LinusK can’t even state with reasonable accuracy what feminist principles actually are. To continue the analogy, you’re more or less in the position, epistemologically speaking, of the medieval antisemites who imagined that Jews sacrificed Christian babies and ate them.

[iiandyiiii]

@Jack_of_Words

Another confirmation that feminism has risen (or sunk) to the status of a religion in the minds of its adherents. Irrational beliefs held as ‘revealed truths’ that cannot be challenged - indeed, to challenge them is to confirm their ‘truth’ in the minds of the faithful.

I do think Islam (or Mormonism) would be the better analogy though. Certainly, the christian primary texts urge christians to proselytise, but most don’t go out of their way to do that. Most muslims I’ve met don’t either, but the primary text is more forceful in its message of conversion, while the mormons will eventually baptise you even after death.

Nope – you can feel free to challenge them. But most of the ideas you’re challenging aren’t feminist ideas, at least according to my understanding of feminism.

My statement has nothing to do with the validity of feminism or its ideals. It’s about what those ideals are – and you continually get them wrong, at least for my concept of feminism.

You’re trying to tell us feminists in this thread that what we believe isn’t feminism (and that real feminism is very bad) – that seems as unlikely to work as telling Jews that what they believe isn’t Judaism (and that real Judaism is very bad).

[LinusK]

@raventhief

And the vast majority of custody cases are decided by mutual agreement. AGAIN. Why are men agreeing to such an unequal division? Because they don’t feel that it’s in the best interest of the child? Why are you blaming women for the agreements reached in divorce cases?

Let’s make a deal.

If you want to assume that “mutual agreement” means men are getting what they want, I’ll go along with that - on one condition:

If men are getting what they want, by losing their children, then it shouldn’t make any difference what the legal standard is, since fathers are getting what they want.

So let’s make shared parenting the legal standard, when parents don’t agree. Again, it shouldn’t make any difference - right? - because fathers are going to agree to every-other-weekend anyway, since that’s what they want.

Right?

So let’s make shared parenting the default order - when parents don’t agree - and see what happens.

If you’re right - that men really don’t want to be with their children - then things will stay the same. And I’ll acknowledge that fathers don’t want to be with their children.

If shared parenting becomes the norm, then you’ll agree that I’m right: that it’s the legal system - and not fathers’ callous disregard for their children - that results in fathers agreeing to become every-other weekend dads.

Deal?

[BrightSunshine]

@LinusK

Of course not.

Butgirls are doing better academically, across the board

Not in STEM fields. I work as a scientist and women were 6% of my PhD incoming class, make up maybe 10-15% of my current subfield, and are so scarce that some weeks I didn’t have any meetings with another woman in it.

A few weeks ago, I saw parents actively encouraging their sons instead of daughters to approach our booth with activities on computer programing. Sons that don’t do as well as their sisters getting more encouragement.

A couple of years ago, when speaking to a high school science class, the teacher asked me to comment on how “math and science is more difficult for girls”.

I myself was told all my life that this isn’t what I’m supposed to do, this isn’t something I’d be good at, etc. I was asked to “shut up even if you know the answer”, told that “the women have said enough, what about the men”, and the previous cited “I don’t want a woman director”, etc etc.

That’s why I’m interested to live in Jack of World’s universe because apparently there is equal opportunity there.

[QuickSilver]

@LinusK

Of course not.

Butgirls are doing better academically, across the board:

From Slate:

Women are currently getting more associate’s degrees, more bachelor’s degree’s, more master’s degree’s, and more doctor’s degrees. Source.

So engaging in outreach geared toward girls is great. I’m not sure it’s girls who need it, though.

Are you suggesting that well educated, high achieving women are a threat to men? In what demonstrable way? And what do you think ought to be done about it?

[Jack_of_Words]

@Kimstu

What? Your intepretation of iiandyiiii’s remark doesn’t make any sense. He’s not talking about whether or not a certain set of ideas is the ‘truth’: he’s talking about the importance of accurately describing what that set of ideas actually claims.

Never mind whether or not feminist principles count as any kind of ‘revealed truth’: the point here is that antifeminists like you and LinusK can’t even state with reasonable accuracy what feminist principles actually are. To continue the analogy, you’re more or less in the position, epistemologically speaking, of the medieval antisemites who imagined that Jews sacrificed Christian babies and ate them.

More or less? As in ‘rightly or wrongly’, where it’s always actually wrongly (or in this case, less)?

We’ve seen ‘feminist principles’ reiterated here, and in similar threads, and, most pertinently, over and over in the real world. That some posters here have the bare-faced cheek to suggest I (as a random stranger on the internet) am not entitled to an opinion, but they (random strangers on the internet) are…is that a feminist principle?

The analogy to religion is, as with any analogy (I believe there are internet resources that can help with comprehension), inevitably flawed. I don’t, for example, suggest that you offer up prayers to a goddess (though I have met feminists who were promoting a goddess cult, as it happens).

So, I’m considerably “less” than implying feminists eat babies. There’s no evidence that jews eat babies either (oh, is this another variant of the slimey tactic that kept cropping up in the antifeminism thread? Believe in our faith or we’ll imply you’re also racist and an anti-semite etc? Shameful stuff). There is, however, plenty of evidence for the detestable and despicable (woohoo, I have a catchphrase now!) behaviour of many feminists. I have no evidence, apart from the bald assertion of random internet strangers, that those strangers are not ‘that kind of feminist’. I do know that you are actively shielding them though.

[Kimstu]

@Jack_of_Words

So, I’m considerably “less” than implying feminists eat babies.

Nobody here ever suggested that you are in any respect implying that feminists eat babies.

What I am saying (and your incoherent ramblings keep confirming it) is that your antifeminist claims about what feminists believe or advocate are not significantly more accurate than the claims of medieval antisemites that Jews eat babies.

[Jimmy_Chitwood]

@LinusK

Ah. But there is a standard judgment. The standard is that one parent gets primary custody, and the other gets every-other-weekend.

No there isn’t. No it isn’t.

You have no idea what you’re talking about. You are making shit up and repeating it. All of this is nonsense. If you are a practicing attorney: stop.

[lance_strongarm]

@Jack_of_Words

There is, however, plenty of evidence for the detestable and despicable (woohoo, I have a catchphrase now!) behaviour of many feminists.

There’s plenty of evidence of detestable and despicable behavior of many PEOPLE. So what? Are all people evil?

Stop trying to bash a group of people by pointing to some of them. That’s simple irrational nonsense. It’s the same logic that racists and sexists use.

Argue about principles, not people. If you see someone who says something you disagree with, attack the argument. If that person calls him/herself a feminist, so what? Just tell us what you don’t like. Stop trying to argue that all feminists are wrong about their beliefs just because you think some are. That’s a simple logical fallacy.

[Kimstu]

@LinusK

So let’s make shared parenting the legal standard, when parents don’t agree.

Why should we introduce a uniform legal standard at all? Why shouldn’t we just keep adjudicating individual cases in accordance with the best interests of the individual child(ren) in each case?

ISTM that the factors generally considered relevant to the “best interests of the child” are pretty important, and should not be overruled for the sake of arbitrarily establishing some uniform standard. Here’s a description of how courts evaluate those interests in adjudicating custody disputes:

What the best interests of a child are in a given situation depends on many factors, including:

the child’s age, sex, and mental and physical health

the parent’s mental and physical health

the parent’s lifestyle and other social factors, including whether the child is exposed to second-hand smoke and whether there is any history of child abuse

the emotional bond between parent and child, as well as the parent’s ability to give the child guidance

the parent’s ability to provide the child with food, shelter, clothing, and medical care

the child’s established living pattern (school, home, community, religious institution)

the quality of the child’s education in the current situation

the impact on the child of changing the status quo, and

the child’s preference, if the child is above a certain age (usually about 12).

Assuming that none of these factors clearly favors one parent over the other, most courts tend to focus on which parent is likely to provide the children a stable environment, and which parent will better foster the child’s relationship with the other parent. With younger children, this may mean awarding custody to the parent who has been the child’s primary caregiver. With older children, this may mean giving custody to the parent who is best able to foster continuity in education, neighborhood life, religious institutions, and peer relationships.

It’s obvious that factors like “emotional bond between parent and child” and “impact of changing the status quo” and “established living pattern” and “the child’s preference” will tend to favor the child’s living with the primary-caregiver parent. But that tendency will not disadvantage fathers who have been equal or primary caregivers prior to divorce.

To argue that the social and emotional factors affecting an individual child’s best interests should be disregarded in favor of setting up an arbitrary uniform standard of 50-50 split is a classic “judgement of Solomon” solution. It smacks more of vindictiveness and competitiveness towards the other parent than of genuine concern for the child.

[Jack_of_Words]

@Kimstu

Nobody here ever suggested that you are in any respect implying that feminists eat babies.

So literal…no, of course you weren’t, I was employing a creative concatenation. When something seems ludicrous on its face, I tend to ask myself what I have failed to understand, but some people are more inclined to suppose that they can’t possibly be wrong, I suppose.

@Kimstu

What I am saying (and your incoherent ramblings keep confirming it)

My “incoherent ramblings”? That will be within the acceptable range of irrelevant insults for this sub-forum, will it? Earnestly engaging in debate (rather than staunchly defending whatever you’ve decided to believe) would involve seeking clarification of ‘incoherent ramblings’. What you’re doing is dismissing criticism as incoherent rambling, along with several other tactics for disrupting debate on display here. But let’s see what you think your insults ‘confirm’:

@Kimstu

is that your antifeminist claims about what feminists believe or advocate are not significantly more accurate than the claims of medieval antisemites that Jews eat babies.

Have I made claims about what feminists believe or advocate? How remiss of you not to have shown them, along with the associated rebuttals.

Have you (or any other feminist here) made claims about what feminists believe or advocate? Wouldn’t an honest debate demand that sort of thing? All I recall is that several posters are fond of saying ‘not all feminists’, or some variant of ‘I, a random internet user, are better placed to describe feminism than you, you random internet user’. It’s not the most convincing argument, as I’m sure you can see.

I base my understanding of feminism on having lived and worked with feminists, and on observing feminists ‘in the wild’, as it were. Random internet posters saying ‘No, you’re wrong, and to prove it I’m going to insult you’ don’t sway me. Tell me you’re shocked, go on…

Examples abound in this thread alone of self-identified feminists demonstrating their pro-woman/anti-man bias. Whether there’s a particularly strong correlation between those posters and the posters who say ‘you don’t know what feminism is, only I do’, I can’t say - it’s not so much that I don’t care to take on the work, more that I find it hard to distinguish between you all when none of you say anything of consequence, most of you seem to drop any line of enquiry when it suits you (or should I say, when it doesn’t…) or ignore difficult questions in favour of finding a new line of attack, and the similarities of the orthodox chapbook responses blur your individual personalities.

The comparisons with religious zealots seem more and more apt. Were I declaring myself an atheist, I would be no more obliged to satisfy you as to why than I do when declaring myself an antifeminist. That you believe yourselves to have access to a divine truth (‘have you read St. Germaine?’, ‘consider the patriarchal banana’) does not oblige me to justify being outside your church. I think it’s more useful to encourage you to put on record the ignorance and insults that constitute your attitude to the unfaithful.

I’ve often had enjoyable and educational discussions with people of faith - less so with feminists, to be fair, and almost always never with zealots of either persuasion.

But I’m nothing if not naively optimistic. Come along then, set out your stall and let us have a respectful, adult interaction.

[Kimstu]

@Jack_of_Words

Examples abound in this thread alone of self-identified feminists demonstrating their pro-woman/anti-man bias.

Cite? Verbatim quotes with explicit poster attributions and post numbers, please.

[lance_strongarm]

@Jack_of_Words

I base my understanding of feminism on having lived and worked with feminists, and on observing feminists ‘in the wild’, as it were.

Then go argue with them.

Stop trying to hold others responsible for what they say. It’s irrational and unfair.

[Really_Not_All_That_Bright]

@LinusK

So let’s make shared parenting the legal standard, when parents don’t agree.

That is the standard. As **Jimmy **notes, you are making things up. For example, from Florida (hardly a bastion of progressive thought:

[QUOTE=§61.13(2)(c), Fla. Stat.]
1. It is the public policy of this state that each minor child has frequent and continuing contact with both parents after the parents separate or the marriage of the parties is dissolved and to encourage parents to share the rights and responsibilities, and joys, of childrearing. There is no presumption for or against the father or mother of the child or for or against any specific time-sharing schedule when creating or modifying the parenting plan of the child.
2. The court shall order that the parental responsibility for a minor child be shared by both parents unless the court finds that shared parental responsibility would be detrimental to the child.
[/QUOTE]

[Jack_of_Words]

@Jack_of_Words

[…]But I’m nothing if not naively optimistic. Come along then, set out your stall and let us have a respectful, adult interaction.

@Kimstu

Cite? Verbatim quotes with explicit poster attributions and post numbers, please.

Naively optimistic indeed.

@Kimstu

[…] your antifeminist claims about what feminists believe or advocate […]

@Jack_of_Words

[…]Have I made claims about what feminists believe or advocate? How remiss of you not to have shown them, along with the associated rebuttals.[…]

How about you go first? Tell you what, when I get a moment to laboriously drag up what you’ve failed to notice (or, more likely, plan to argue about endlessly so the core matter is left unexplored and the zealous footsoldiers get to come up with more inane insults that narrowly escape moderation), I’ll post it. Complete with explicit poster attribution and post numbers (do you mean you’re going to claim a foul if you don’t like the style of presentation regardless of the substance?). You can do the same. Whichever of us gets there first could probably claim a moral victory, eh?

[raventhief]

@LinusK

Let’s make a deal.

If you want to assume that “mutual agreement” means men are getting what they want, I’ll go along with that - on one condition:

If men are getting what they want, by losing their children, then it shouldn’t make any difference what the legal standard is, since fathers are getting what they want.

So let’s make shared parenting the legal standard, when parents don’t agree. Again, it shouldn’t make any difference - right? - because fathers are going to agree to every-other-weekend anyway, since that’s what they want.

Right?

So let’s make shared parenting the default order - when parents don’t agree - and see what happens.

If you’re right - that men really don’t want to be with their children - then things will stay the same. And I’ll acknowledge that fathers don’t want to be with their children.

If shared parenting becomes the norm, then you’ll agree that I’m right: that it’s the legal system - and not fathers’ callous disregard for their children - that results in fathers agreeing to become every-other weekend dads.

Deal?

No deal. To begin with, I never said that mutual agreement was “men getting what they want.” Hopefully, what the mutually agreed upon arrangement was what’s best for the child(ren). Divorce is a terrible thing. If one parent moves a few hours away, how will the 50/50 shared custody work? I know several couples that split geographically as well as romantically. So does the child in question spend one week at his or her established school, and the next at a new one, alternating and forth like that? Some parents are unable to agree on anything, as a matter of principle- in those cases, who makes decisions for the child, if the parents cannot or will not agree on even simple issues? I think that shared parenting is a laudable goal, but I have seen several cases in which that will not work as a “default.” I want a judge in a contested custody case to decide what is best for the child. Shared parenting would be ideal, in a lot of those situations, but not all of them. But that standard for contested custody would not have much effect, I think, on the vast majority of cases, which are decided by the families in question, and not according to any legal standard.

[QuickSilver]

@Jack_of_Words

How about you go first? Tell you what, when I get a moment to laboriously drag up what you’ve failed to notice (or, more likely, plan to argue about endlessly so the core matter is left unexplored and the zealous footsoldiers get to come up with more inane insults that narrowly escape moderation), I’ll post it. Complete with explicit poster attribution and post numbers (do you mean you’re going to claim a foul if you don’t like the style of presentation regardless of the substance?). You can do the same. Whichever of us gets there first could probably claim a moral victory, eh?

It’s as if you don’t actually need to have anyone respond to you in order to have an argument.

[Jack_of_Words]

Here you go then, kimstu. I jumped back to page 12 to start.

@QuickSilver

[…] we’re talking about women’s equality issues[…]

Equality issues, for the real meaning of equality, are women and men’s equality issued. They’re gender equality issues. Only the feminist redefinition of ‘equality’ allows for “women’s equality issues”.

@BrightSunshine

I’m a feminist who engages in at least one issue. My issue is the low number of women in STEM fields. I engage in outreach activity geared towards girls. […]

So your work is pro-women and anti-men? Why isn’t it even expressed as about equality, regardless of how it’s implemented.

@BrightSunshine

[…] Do you consider it censorship when I challenged my male colleague when he said “I don’t want another woman director” for our department? […]

What relevance is the sex of the colleague in this anecdote, unless to imply that men don’t want women bosses? (Women quite often prefer not to be managed by women, by the way - I don’t have my hands on a citation for that, so if you’re determined to disbelieve it, go ahead).

@BrightSunshine

It’s funny you say that. There have been a number of mass shootings where the male shooter specifically target women and girls he doesn’t know. Has there been any female mass shooter specifically targeting men and boys she doesn’t know? How do you feel about this as an egalitarian?

The ‘number’ referred to here is, as I responded at the time ‘possibly 1’. BrightSunshine, as noted at the time, hadn’t even bothered to do a simple search of female mass murderers (not all of whom were shooters, though - again, as noted in my response - the first school shooter was a girl). The clear subtext of this argument is that men=maligant murderers of innocent women and women = saintly sufferers of sexism. BrightSunshine chose not to respond when called out on this cobblers.

That doesn’t seem like terribly many citations to me, so I started going backwards from page 12. Ooh, here’s a familiar name:

@Kimstu

[…]If men want full equality […], then they have to take on an equal share of […] responsibilities.

I can’t find you saying that if women want equality (in any given area) then they need to take responsibility in that area. Like, eg, voting/conscription. I’m taking double standards as pro-women/anti-men, where that is shown by the varying standards.

@BrightSunshine

[…]So then why are you and other MRAs so obsessed with custody in contested divorces, which affects about 1% of children, instead of the vast majority of cases where the fathers are not putting in equal efforts in childrearing? Could it be that fathers participating more equally in parenting is not the main goal, but rather control?

Apparently fathers (who are mostly men, I think) want control. Mothers (at least 99% of whom are women) are saintly self-sacrificers.

I’m bored now. That was about a third of the thread explored, and even then I may have glossed over more examples. I expect nothing better than this in response:

@QuickSilver

Rubbish.

More rubbish.

Butt-hurt rubbish.

I cite the entire thread as evidence that no feminist here wants an adult, intelligent discussion. Are you going to be citing anything to back up your claims about me, or like BrightSunshine (and other posters I shan’t be laboriously citing for you) do you plan to evade, avoid, distract and dissemble?