Feminism: C or D?

*chortle chortle chuckle GUFFAW*

I have Asian friends who complain bigstyle about it, because their behaviour is monitored by other family members and they are threatened with issues of 'izzat' (pride) if they do something 'odd' eg. seek out non-arranged partners (one of my best friends, Satinder, is from a large and influential Southall family of big-in-the-gurdwara Sikhs and she worries about even being seen on the Tube with her WASP boyfriend). But if those parameters are not in effect then it's pretty cool.

I think I'd still be paranoid. It might be a matter of personality, but me, my parents and my sister were all I needed -- the rest of the relatives around would have slowly freaked me out, ick.

Ummmmm...no. At least not racism; that's far more complex than such a pat explanation can address. (For instance, though a white lesbian activist and an African-American male activist might well agree that they share a common enemy in white male heterosexuals, I daresay many of them also see each other as a priori enemies as well. And what about what some African-Americans think of Jews, and vice versa?) And I resent the chronic implication that majority = oppressors = "haves" = bad, minority = victims = "have-nots" = good. These sorts of arguments lack sophistication in their understanding of human nature.

If your privilege is based on the exploitation of others and you *realise* that but do nothing, then you're just as bad as the CEO of Nestle.

Anyone for shades of grey? Moral ambiguity? Nuance? I don't buy the above at all -- it's the sort of (by implication) you're-with-us-or-you're-against-us thing that I can' t stand.

Feminism as an agent of the emancipation of women from sociocultural prescriptions and sexual violence/harassment = classic. Feminism as an agent of critically examining gender roles and their relationship to who we are and how we behave = classic, at least sometimes. (Feminism as perspective and agent = classic. Feminism as ideology = dud, but so are all ideologies. Skepticism = classic.)

Where certain branches of it trip up, as do so many movements from every part of the philosophical spectrum, is its portrayal of the world purely in terms of power dynamics (which is (1) extremely limited if not just plain inaccurate and (2) utterly and totally joyless) and its frequent reliance on the identification, blame, and vilifcation of the "evil Other" -- a thing which basically DOESN'T EXIST (the occasional sociopath aside, perhaps), and the search for which (and punishment upon its presumed discovery) is responsible for a pretty high percentage of the woes with which the world is plagued by agencies ranging from the Nazi party to the church to nearly-any-case-of-racial-violence-you-care-to-name. "All men are rapists and that's all they are" (Marilyn French) = "the Jews poisoned the water supply and gave us the Black Plague" (commonly held opinion back then) = Godhatesfags.com. This is overstating it a bit, of course, but I trust my point is clear.

The thing is though that the logic of "making things properly equal" should lead to "nobody gets to have it quite so good anymore" rather than "now women get to have it just as good".

Doesn't technology trump that argument in the end, though? At least with wealth, and I don't follow your argument vis-a-vis power.

I think there is a degree to which this is true of, say, porn stars and strippers, who appropriate the language of feminism to say: "I am doing with my body what I choose to" -- but what they are choosing to do it put themselves in a situation that sometimes only serves to fuel misogyny and the thick-headed view of 'women as sex objects'. this is certainly *NOT* to let men off the hook for this manner of thinking, but merely to propose a possible way this 'appropriation of language' takes place.

I am not some trustafarian who adopts a do as I say, not as I do attitude with regard to others. I do actually walk it like I talk it.

I don't see how saying "Stop violence against women" means "Men have it great" but then, I tried to use logic, so you will have to tell me a better way of understanding your thought process here. Or did you just stop by to complain about how women are doing too much complaining?

:) OK it is not nice to argue with a 15 year old, but jeez, I'm a feminist and it is crazy when people tell me what I think and get it all wrong.

Is it anybody's fault? Are women less culpable than men?

and by 'men' do we mean the men alive now, or those around while the present system arose?
I don't think living men should be held any more responsible for what some section if society did before they were born than living women should.

I think the saying "the grass is always greener" applies here. At least a littl bit.

That's just one example of how society treats men as the disposable sex, and expects them to be the soldiers and garbagemen doing the most dangerous and unhealthy work, sacrificing health, happiness and family life for career. It's called "patriarchy" when men succeed in careers, but not when they also suffer in greater numbers, and not when they're doing it out of neccesity because it's their role to support the family at work much like it's the women's role to support a family at home. If you want to call that women's role sexist, fine, just apply the same standard to men and replace "husband" with "boss".

Feminism is built on those double standards. Another example of a cornerstone of feminism that is just not true: the "wage gap." If women earn 78 cents on the dollar a man gets, then men shouldn't do an average of 6-8 more years of work in their lifetime. They should get family leave benefits like women get maternity leave (the only workplace benefit that comes from a choice.) And let's bring gender equity to those most dangerous and unhealthy jobs where men make up the majority of workplace deaths and injuries ("the glass cellar.")
Lastly let's get rid of inheritance, where husbands (who society grants 7 years less life expectancy) leave those higher earnings to their wives.

Has anyone read Warren Farrell and what did you think?

Sorry to be righteous and pompous. I do it because that stuff is not the "accepted truth" that things like the wage gap are. Also I hate seeing people get fucked over. Especially by people posing as progressive, and people making false accusations of rape, violence, or patriarchy, and otherwise manipulating for greed.

Mainstream feminism = total dud. Feminism with class-consciousness, especially when applied to pre-capitalist society has good worth for analysis, but not as much prescription value. to me anyways.

In any case, even if you want to take the broader perspective and talk about all violence in general, it's hard to escape the conclusion that, whatever sex the victim, it's certain patterns of male behaviour that's the problem, and not female behaviour. Is it wrong for a woman to suggest that?

Domestic violence is overwhelmingly male on female? A quick google says some interesting stuff.

"In July 1994 the Bureau of Justice Statistics of the U.S. Department of Justice the results of a survey of family homicides released a Special Report detailing in 33 urban U.S. counties. The report covered ONLY convictions, which should respond to any contention that female-on-male family violence is almost always reactive. The report said:

"A third of family murders involved a female as the killer. In sibling murders, females were 15 percent of killers, and in murders of parents, 18 percent. But in spouse murders, women represented 41 percent of killers. In murders of their offspring, women predominated, accounting for 55 percent of killers.

Personally I grew up with an abusive female family member. After instigating fights the (mostly male) cops would be brought in. "Female victimisation" was the excuse for the males getting in trouble with the law and the courts and cops became a tool for manipulation. That doesn't happen the other way around.

(xpost)

Poverty among lower class women is worse in economic-reductionism terms. The other side is that men are the majority of all victims of workplace injury, sickness or death. It's higher pay for worse job conditions, and job security is also much worse.

The other side is that men are the majority of all victims of workplace injury, sickness or death. It's higher pay for worse job conditions, and job security is also much worse.

This might apply to some Western countries, yes, but not to most Third World countries where the majority of the world population lives.

Bill & Ted had it right. Be excellent to each other (dudes). It's the only way to go.

Other sides to that "double burden:"

-men are expected to work to take care of a family, but are denied the family caretaker role themselves if they want it. Their higher pay is a sacrifice to the family and they don't get to enjoy any of it. Especially when higher pay often means sacrificing health and happiness to the job, while the traditional women's roles could be said to provide the "psychic income" of family time. This goes for divorce cases too when men are most often denied child custody.

-There's hardly very many men who live at home supported by working wives. Working men who do more average hours than working women don't get family time.

-Men don't have access to other social support for families- alimony and child support, maternity leave benefits, or equal access to welfare. Homelessness might be good to bring up because it's much worse for men than women. So if women are treated like property in the home, at least they get taken care of while men are disposable.

Do women around the world have the shorter end of the stick? I disagree: 50 million women didn't die in war in the 20th century.

As for trying to raise these issues alongside female discrimination, fair enough, when they aren't being actively made invisible.

What sort of feminism are we talking about? The ILX approved kind where women can talk about shagging but men cannot because any and all straight male libidosm are inherently obscene and evil and must be censored? The sort of feminism that removes threads about Christina Aguilera and how shaggable she looks in her video? The sort of feminism that brands all pornography evil?

Or the sort of the feminism that doesn't waste time with such utter cock and instead spends its days trying to obtain equal wages and equal managerial standing for women?

Is it's the latter then I'm all for it.

If it's the sort of feminism that says women should be permitted to take 6 months off to raise kids but still be entitled to lead large businesses then I'm skeptical. It's one or the other if you ask me (and I know that might sound sexist, but I think if men want to play house-husband, and there are many, then it's the same thing. Capitalism sucks, I agree, but as long as that's society and feminism appears to have become OF society rather than working to CHANGE it, then I see no alternative).

This is a VERY good point: society consists of females and males.

as a consequence the issue of violence against men is now on the political agenda as a serious topic in itself: sucka's argument having weight is a consequence of mainstream feminism, not a counter to it

uh oh!

The only context to discuss anything from Margaret Wente is to understand that she in Canada's leading anti-science, anti-environment, populist troll.

even looks like Katie Hopkins

not that on this of all threads a woman should be judged on her appearance

"It’s hard to take anybody seriously when she’s droning on about oppression, colonialism and imperialism, especially when she’s uptalking."
-Margaret Wente

Wente's been caught plagiarising others so frequently that now she just repeats herself. Trots out a column lecturing us about hook-up culture etc every couple of months. Usually name-checks Gloria Steinmen then asks what went wrong with feminism, then explains why young people are so unhappy. We got this last when Trainwreck came out. This old lunatic needs to retire.

read as far as http://www.theglobeandm...

i need to know what the nutcases are talking about. you know, keep your friends closer, enemies closer type of thing.

peggy is out of control, though. was wondering if what she was talking about was even a dialogue feminists were having these days, but she seems out of the loop.

Dumb article, but I have to admit I had a similar reaction at least to the opening of the NYMag piece in question -- wasted sex is more likely than not to be bad and perhaps an anecdote about it is not the best setup for an article about how gender power imbalance results in bad consensual sex.

What is the origin of all these "No, Women Can't Have it All" pieces that pop up ad infinitum? Was there once a piece that said "Women Can Have it All?" The first time I remember this coming up at all was in the context of some mainstream news magazine cover asking "Can Women Have it All?" already kind of challenging the idea, and I want to say it was at least 15-18 years ago that I remember seeing that.

"Women Can Have it All?"

there's a book iirc

that was supposed to read "Can Women Have it All?" obvs. It just feels like people are beating a dead cliché at this point, so to speak.

1982
https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fbackstorywriting.files.wordpress.com%2F2012%2F08%2Fhaving-it-all.jpg&f=1

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/04/magazine/the-complicated-origins-of-having-it-all.html

huh, well that p much explains it, thx