throwing the baby out with the bathwater isn't a good idea though.
i definitely identify as a feminist, i guess i am a cultural feminist. i used to have a lot stronger opinions about feminism but these days i am more about asking questions than giving answers. i might write something better on here when i'm less tired and distracted.
― The Lady Ms Lurex (lucylurex), Sunday, 31 August 2003 10:38 (twenty years ago) link
― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 31 August 2003 10:40 (twenty years ago) link
Personally, regarding this radical feminist thing, I'm not convinced that history has given us lots of examples of revolutions that achieved their aims, and I think there are still lots of gains to be had in the current sociopolitical structure, so I'm still in favour of pitching for gradual change. There is still loads for feminism to do - the number of countries with equal pay for women: zero. The number of women killed by their partners a week in the UK: two. The number of women victims of domestic violence, a crime still not taken very seriously by much of the legal and political establishment: MILLIONS!
I'm as quick to jump on language (for instance) that I think is sexist (or racist or homphobic, etc.) as anyone, and I frequently get angry about such things, even here, but I think the general atmosphere, the ground attitude, here is about as anti-sexist, anti-racist, anti-homphobic and so on as anywhere I've ever been, and far better than almost anywhere. There's the odd misogynist (or racist or homphobic) person who turns up, but they are not welcomed and it's rare that they stick around. If the best someone can cite as ILX's hostility to women is someone saving IM chats involving women that's pretty good, I think. (That it turned out that he just saves chats generally is a separate point.)
― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Sunday, 31 August 2003 10:43 (twenty years ago) link
― youn, Sunday, 31 August 2003 10:51 (twenty years ago) link
― Momus (Momus), Sunday, 31 August 2003 10:52 (twenty years ago) link
― gareth (gareth), Sunday, 31 August 2003 11:01 (twenty years ago) link
― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 31 August 2003 11:06 (twenty years ago) link
― youn, Sunday, 31 August 2003 11:07 (twenty years ago) link
Some liberal feminist theorists may highlight extreme radical feminism as a boon to the liberal cause. Just as Orbit says, "[radicals] make mainstream feminist organizations like NOW look more reasonable in comparison". What they also do - not intentionally, but by allowing a target for easy exaggeration by anti-feminist media - is create a highly negative and all-pervasive image of "The Feminist", that boiler-suit-clad bulldyke bugbear of the eighties, all pamphlets and man-hatred. And even after this fades from the public consciousness you're left with the idea that there is only one feminism and to disagree with one of its precepts or behaviours is to be a non-feminist. Which is the equivalent of saying "a woman is a human being who wears skirts: I do not wear skirts, therefore I am not a woman."
I consider myself a feminist, and I'm grateful for the things which previous generations of feminists (including in this def. suffragists and anyone who has supported the equality of women) have given me the possibility to do: vote, work as a plumber, plan to go to university and get a degree, support myself without losing social status, &c. What they've given me is a greater equality of opportunity than I might have had in other eras. Ideally, equality of opportunity should work across the board, for all people, regardless of gender or race or economic status: feminism is only part of the struggle, can alone only deal with one set of problems tied to one factor.
I think, Mei, it's not really a question of "how can such complicated things as human beings ever be equal?" - people will never all be of equal economic status, equal interest in film, equal map-reading ability. But they should, and I believe can, be given an equal right to choose what to do with their lives; to be constrained by temperament and personal ability, not by a blanket definition of what 'their type of people' should do, how 'their type of people' should live. If a woman wants to be a housewife, she should be allowed to; if she wants to be an academic, if she wants to be a sex worker, if she wants to clean toilets, if she wants to drive trucks, if she wants to be the CEO of a lucrative company - if it's within the bounds of ethics and within her ability, a woman should not be prevented by her gender from doing anything that she wants to, or needs to, do. That, to my mind, is the heart of what feminism is about.
― cis (cis), Sunday, 31 August 2003 11:10 (twenty years ago) link
― cis (cis), Sunday, 31 August 2003 11:11 (twenty years ago) link
she shouldn't be forced to be financially dependent for this, either, of course.
― The Lady Ms Lurex (lucylurex), Sunday, 31 August 2003 11:19 (twenty years ago) link
if it's within the bounds of ethics and within her ability, a woman should not be prevented by her gender from doing anything that she wants to, or needs to, do. That, to my mind, is the heart of what feminism is about.
This I agree with 100%, so I thank you for saying this cis, you've helped clarify my thoughts even further.
I have two brothers and no sisters, and so I've grown up very comfortable and "I can hold my own" around men of all ages and attitudes. I'd just as happily call out a brother, boss or stranger if I felt my personal rights were being impinged upon. I won't let anyone get away with shit at a personal level. Obviously though I'm less able to influence things like my level of pay compared to men, media attitudes, or sex selling cars on TV. I think I feel there's the personal and the universal kind of feminism, and my life view, selfish as perhaps it may be, tends towards the personal, and in that arena I feel I can be and am being all I want to be.
I hope I'm not being too muddled here! Heh.
― Trayce (trayce), Sunday, 31 August 2003 11:25 (twenty years ago) link
― adam (adam), Sunday, 31 August 2003 11:53 (twenty years ago) link
― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Sunday, 31 August 2003 11:59 (twenty years ago) link
― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Sunday, 31 August 2003 12:04 (twenty years ago) link
Surely this statement is in itself slightly misandrist (sp.?). Why can't we put identityback where it belongs, i.e how we define ourselves, instead of using it to define our tribal selves against one another.
― Ed (dali), Sunday, 31 August 2003 12:08 (twenty years ago) link
good feminists are already aware of this.
ed, i don't see how thats a misandrist statament at all.
― The Lady Ms Lurex (lucylurex), Sunday, 31 August 2003 12:29 (twenty years ago) link
― Kenan Hebert (kenan), Sunday, 31 August 2003 12:34 (twenty years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Sunday, 31 August 2003 12:57 (twenty years ago) link
Does Momus read his own posts and ask "is this actually germane to the discussion, or is it just me again, trying to put spin on something that makes me feel uncomfortable?"
― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Sunday, 31 August 2003 12:59 (twenty years ago) link
I don't think we can define ourselves as *ourselves* until we stop defining ourselves so much as part of a tribal self, and the only way to lessen the impact of the tribal-self concept is to try and ensure that no tribal self is strengthened above any other.
― cis (cis), Sunday, 31 August 2003 13:34 (twenty years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Sunday, 31 August 2003 13:59 (twenty years ago) link
i have run into many bad feminists in that case. i'm really not trying to pick any kind of argument or anything here, just that after several years in academia doing an arts degree at within a gender and sexuality-obsessed faculty, i react reasonably badly to capital "F" feminism simply coz i found a huge amount of it kneejerk, nonsensical and vastly counterproductive in the sense that it obscured debate on wider issues such as class and race, which i happen to think were far more germane in a predominantly white middle-class environment (as most university english departments are!), especially when no one in three years made any discernible misogynist or homophobic statements. to be fair, no one ever stood up and said "hello my name is heinrich and i am a committed national socialist" either, but i hope you can see what i am saying in relation to concentration on an issue which i see as having already won many of its ideological and practical battles preventing an insititution/group looking at itself and noticing how its predominantly white, middle-class bias was indicative of other social issues which needed addressing far more urgently... i think this works in the context of society as a whole, too, not just my own academic experience. i suppose we all have our own concerns/biases/chips on shoulders etc which make us want to prioritise certain issues (mine being fairly transparent here) but the fact that i think class and race are for more important issue than sexism now solely focuses on the fact that i think feminism has, for the most part, achieved its goals. not that there aren't still certain inequities, but they're now much less pressing than those of poverty, racial prejudice etc in my view. of course, i consider myself a reasonable human being and as such would say that i am a pretty decent advocate of women's rights (or as decent as i can be!) but only as part of the bigger picture...
― Dave Stelfox (Dave Stelfox), Sunday, 31 August 2003 14:10 (twenty years ago) link
Hey nice floral metaphor btw.
― toraneko (toraneko), Sunday, 31 August 2003 14:28 (twenty years ago) link
― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Sunday, 31 August 2003 14:34 (twenty years ago) link
Feminism, although it's a social science like economics, has a much different history because of the ideas/tradition of social change and consciousness-raising that's gone on in the various 'waves' of feminism. Because feminists in leadership positions promoted their ideas as something everyone could participate in, there is a sort of popular language and understanding of feminism (for better or worse) as an activist/participatory culture. Everyone sort of understands economics a little bit, but no-one is having kitchen table meetings to talk about how they can affect the demand curve.
This could be a terribly faulty comparison; the point I'm trying to make is that feminism is in a difficult place because it's at once tied up in the language of academia and the issues of everyday people.
― teeny (teeny), Sunday, 31 August 2003 14:45 (twenty years ago) link
Aw, this is too bad. Can you imagine the heated debates over diminishing marginal utility and how much it *should* affect the demand curve? *grins* Besides, it is sorta nice in a math/econ geek sort of way to think of giant whiteboards being installed in kitchens everywhere across the country so that P-Q plots can be drawn up.
― Just Deanna (Dee the Lurker), Sunday, 31 August 2003 16:23 (twenty years ago) link
yes it is it is...
― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Sunday, 31 August 2003 16:33 (twenty years ago) link
--academia -- academic feminists participate in activism and grassroots organizing. they also participate in policymaking and advocacy for those who don't have the power to protect their rights. there may be a difference in film crit/lit crit, where they might not to the extent that the social science people do.
-sex vs. gender: Gender is the social meaning given to biological characteristics (sex)
-theory vs. praxis: Is feminism a philosophy, and therefore useless mental circles that can't change anything OR is feminism something that happens in women's everyday lives, and is about activism and changing the world that is immediately around *you*?
-the gender binary: current thought is this--gender is a two sided coin. you can't talk about women's oppression without realizing that men also contribute to excluding women AND other women exclude each other as the price of being accepted in a make world.
patriarchy oppresses men by imposing an oppressive masculinity that estranges them from culturally unacceptable feeling (emotions) and expects them to act in callous ways (the locker room, the can't-you-take-it [pussy] attitude, equating women with weakness, women are an insult (bitch, cunt, pussy, whore, ho, skank, slut vs. the one word we have for men: dick and no word that is equivalent to the others).
Patriarchy (meaning society is set up by and for men because we can't escape the history that made it that way--it's in place, what we inherited) oppresses men and women by demanding compulsory heterosexuality.
--gender and sexuality are now discussed as a continuum, where there are degrees of:
1. conforming to the gender stereotype of the culture you live in2. conforming to the biological sexuality you have (e.g. intersexed babies, ambiguous chromosomes, sex assignment at birth surgery, transsexual)
--diversity and inclusion: see bell hooks "All of the men are black, all of the women are white, but some of us are brave". recent feminism has indeed pointed out that every individual is a collection of difference social, economic, cultural, and historical standpoints, and people and institutions in society treat them differently as a result. feminism has grown into a movement that seeks a more just society in general, and race, class, and gender all intertwine.
--feminism and change: feminism is about viewing things simultaneously from your standpoint and connecting your experience to that of women as a group. There will be some things you share and some things you don't. For example, women still make about 75 cents to the man's dollar in wages for doing the exact same job. [these are US gov't figures, so look it up, don't de-rail by asking me to look it up for you. start at www.fedstats.gov]. If you are a woman, you share that with other women, even though you might not share other ideas about sexism, or what is and isn't sexist. So you might want to join other women in actions that aim to close the wage gap.
--privilege: sexism like racism, is institutional. meaningprejudice: the beliefs an individual holdsracism/sexism: social institutions and laws are set up in a way that systematically denies opportunities/ignores the concerns and realities of the lives of the group involved. Example: gay marriage. That is is illegal in most of the US ignores the reality of lesbian and gay lives. The structure is not set up to take them into account. This is just one example.
--privilege: no one thinks they participate in a racist/sexist system, and no one thinks they have privilege. Example: a black person applies for a job and doesn't get it. they wonder "is it because i'm black?" if you are white you never have to ask the question. You are free from that and you don't even realize it. if you are male and you tell a sexist joke you don't have to wonder how it might make women around you feel, because the social pressure on them is so great you know they won't say anything about it. This is called "silencing". Silencing the voices of others includes belittling them, trivializing thenm (don't you have a sense of humor?) [when it comes to serious issues being trivializes, and as domestic abuse and childhood abuse survivor NO I DON'T because it is not funny. Do I have a sense of humor when people are not trying to trivialize serious things? YES I DO].
--being a woman doesn't mean you have a feminist political awareness (meaning are you really up in it, do you know what people are discussing or just your stereotype of it)
--there are all kinds of feminists, feminisms, and definitions of feminism and the good thing is when people talk about them.
― Orbit (Orbit), Sunday, 31 August 2003 16:40 (twenty years ago) link
"two weeks."
― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 31 August 2003 16:42 (twenty years ago) link
In that case I might just be a feminist, because I too believe any woman should have the right to do all those things.
I'm trying very hard to think of examples of something men can do that no woman can, or vice versa, and failing. Child birth maybe.
― mei (mei), Sunday, 31 August 2003 16:45 (twenty years ago) link
― Orbit (Orbit), Sunday, 31 August 2003 16:46 (twenty years ago) link
what is "equality"?
I think what I'm trying to get at is that men and women _are_ different in so many ways. I bet you've at least consiodered my gender whilst reading this.In my experience, for example:
Women are more playful;more likely to be interested in flowers;able to give birth.
Men are more likely to get physically agressive;taller;more interested in microelectronics.
other than the biological characteristics, this is complete bullshit, even given your qualifiers. i'm willing to believe that these characteristics are prevalent within your experience (outside the US?), but your experience is filtered through what you are taught just as people fill gender roles based upon what they are taught, how they are socialized. thus, saying "men are" or "women are" suggests something innate too easily.
ppl talk like there's only one type of gay guy, the faggy, campy hairdresser/florist type. What about all the footy playing, hairy, macho gay guys n bears?
which is just another stereotype, though many ppl play the role. what about the guys (or girls) who are not satisfactorily depicted by any stereotype (like almost everyone on earth) but happen to be gay?
it is sorta nice in a math/econ geek sort of way to think of giant whiteboards being installed in kitchens everywhere across the country so that P-Q plots can be drawn up.
popular discussions of anything academic would be interesting, but as respects econ 101 (which admittedly i never had much success in, and should know more about) most people sate their need for certainty in less complicated ways. < /zing>
who exactly is a "Patriarchy" (or, what does it mean that society is "set up by and for men"; what is "society")? how is heterosexuality "compulsory" and who demands that it be so?
no one thinks they have privilege
this is complete bullshit. i am intensely aware of being privileged as a matter of class, and in other respects. you're presuming to speak for everyone in the world here.
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:08 (twenty years ago) link
― Orbit (Orbit), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:11 (twenty years ago) link
More recent feminism, and some things that link with music and popular culture =
Works Cited
Ang, Ien. 1985. Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London and New York: Routledge.Appadurai, Arjun. ed. 1986. The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press.Barthes, Roland. 1973. Mythologies. London:Paladin.Bayton, Mavis. 1997. Women and the Electric Guitar. . Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. Shiela Whiteley, ed. New York: Routledge.Becker, Carol, ed. 1994. The Subversive Imagination: Artists, Society, and Social Responsibility. New York and London:Routledge. Becker, Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. [1979]. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Buker, Eloise A. 1996. “Sex, Sign, and Symbol: Politics and Feminist Semiotics”. Women & Politics Vol.16(1). Pp. 31-54.Cohen, Sara. 1997. Men Making a Scene: Rock Music and the Production of Gender.Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. Shiela Whiteley, ed. New York: Routledge.Conal, Robbie. 1992. Art Attack: The Midnight Politics of a Guerrilla Artist. New York: Harper.Darnovsky, Marcy, Barbara Epstein, and Richard Flacks, eds. 1995. Cultural Politics and Social Movements. Philadelphia: Temple.Duncombe, Stephen. N.d. (Circa 1996). “Revolution Grrrl Style Now”. Presented at the Annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.Duncombe, Stephen. 1997. Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture. New York:VersoEagleton, Terry. 1990. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Ewen, Stuart. 1988. All Consuming Images: The Politics of Style in Contemporary Culture. New York:Basic.Felshin, Nina, ed. 1995. But is it Art?:The Spirit of Art as Activism. Seattle:Bay Press.Foucault, Michele. 1980. The History of Sexuality: Vol 1, An Introduction. New York: Vintage.Frith, Simon. 1981. Sound Affects:Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock’n’Roll. New York:Pantheon.Gans, Herbert. 1974. Popular Culture and High Culture.New York: Basic.Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. [1932]. Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers.Griswold 1987. The Fabrication of Meaning: Literary Interpretation in the United States, Great Britain, and the West Indies. American Journal of Sociology. 92 (2987): 1077-1118.--- 1981. American Character and the American Novel: An Expansion of Reflection Theory in the Sociology of Literature. American Journal of Sociology. 86: 740-65.Guerilla Girls. 1995. Confessions of the Guerrilla GirlsHebdige, Dick. 1979. Subculture:The Meaning of Style. London and New York: Methuen.--- 1988. Hiding in the Light. New York: Routledge.Hennesey, Rosemary. 1993. Materialist Feminism and the Politics of Discourse. New York and London:Routledge.Hooks, Bell. 1994. Outlaw Culture:Resisting Representations. New York and London: Routledge.Horkheimer, Max and Theodor Adorno. 1987 [1944. ]Dialectic of Enlightenment trans. John Willett. New York: Continuum.Johnston, Hank, and Bert Klandermans, eds. Social Movements and Culture. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press.Juno, Andrea. 1996. Angry Women in Rock Vol. 1. New York: Juno Books.Kearney, Mary Celeste. 1997. “The Missing Links: Riot Grrrl – Feminism – Lesbian Culture”. Pp. 207-229 in Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. London and New York:Routledge.Leonard, Marion. 1997. “Rebel Girl, You are the Queen of my World: Feminism, Subculture, and Grrrl Power”. Pp. 230-256 in Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. London and New York:Routledge.Long, Elizabeth. 1985. The American Dream and the Popular Novel. Boston: Routledge.Lupoff, Richard. 1965. Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure.Malinowski, B. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific. London:Routledge.McAdam, Doug, John D. McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald, eds. 1996. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements:Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures and Cultural Framings. New York: Cambridge University Press.McKay, George. 1996. Senseless Acts of Beauty: Cultures of Resistance Since the Sixties. New York: Verso.McRobbie, Angela. 1991. Feminism and Youth Culture:From Jackie to Just Seventeen. Boston:Unwin Hyman.Mills, C. Wright. 1959. The Sociological Imagination. London, Oxford, and New York: Oxford University Press.Penley, Contstance. 1992. “Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture”. Pp.479-94 in Cultural Studies, edited by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler. New York:Routledge.McKay, George. 1996. Senseless Acts of Beauty:Cultures of Resistance since theSixties. London and New York: Verso.Melucci, Alberto. 1985. “The Symbolic Challenge of Contemporary Movements”. Social Research. Vol. 52 No. 4. Winter. pp 801.Moscowitz, Samuel. 1952. Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom.Meyer, Davis S. and Nancy Whittier. 1994. “Social Movement Spillover”. Social Problems. Vol. 41(2), May. Pp. 277-298.Nelson, Cary and Grossberg Lawrence. We Gotta Get out of This Place.Penley, Constance. 1992. “Feminism, Psychoanalysis, and the Study of Popular Culture”. Cultural Studies. Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula A. Treichler, eds. New York and London: Routledge.Radway, Janice. 1984. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Raphael, Amy. 1995. Grrrls: Viva Rock Divas. New York: St. Martin’s.Scott. James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak: Everydya Forms of Peasant Resistance. New Haven: Yale University Press.Smith, Dorothy E. 1987. The Everyday World as Problematic:A Feminist Sociology. Boston: Northeastern University Press.Straw, Will. 1997. Sizing up Record Collections: Gender and Connoisseurship in rock music culture. Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender. Shiela Whiteley, ed. New York: Routledge.Swedberg, Richard. 199X. “Markets as Social Structures”. Handbook of Economic Sociology.Taylor, Verta and Nancy Whittier. 1992. “Collective Identity in Social Movement Communities: Lesbian Feminist Mobilization”. Pp. 104-130 in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, edited by Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller. New Haven and London:Yale University Press.Turner, Victor. Drama, Fields, and Metaphors.Vale, V. 1996. Zines! Vol. I. San Francisco, CA:V/Search.Warner, Jr., Harry. 1969. All Our Yesterdays.Wertham, Fredric. 1973. The World of Fanzines:A Special Form of Communication. Carbondale and Edwardsville IL:Southern Illinois University Press.Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
― Orbit (Orbit), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:17 (twenty years ago) link
if you are male and you tell a sexist joke you don't have to wonder how it might make women around you feel, because the social pressure on them is so great you know they won't say anything about it
not where I come from.
― gabbneb (gabbneb), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:22 (twenty years ago) link
and gabb, that was an example. and you are not the whole world either, and can't speak for others. i was sumarizing, not speaking for others.
, and actually i can post another more selective bib if you like, more hooks, pat hill collins etc etc. but this was the one most handy.
― Orbit (Orbit), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:27 (twenty years ago) link
IN MY EXPERIENCE, for example:
Most of those things are GENERAL TENDENCIES, obviously there are violent women and men who grow roses.
other than the biological characteristics, this is complete bullshit, even given your qualifiers. i'm willing to believe that these characteristics are prevalent within your experience (outside the US?), but your experience is filtered through what you are taught just as people fill gender roles based upon what they are taught, how they are socialized. thus, saying "men are" or "women are" suggests something innate too easily. -- gabbneb (gabbne...), August 31st, 2003.
I do live outside the US but I don't know why that would make a difference.
Yes my experience is filtered through what I am taught I guess, but these things are my own observations. I've been told (news, newspapers, documentaries, etc.) that men are more likely to get physically agressive and that tallies with my observations.I'm sure someone must have told me at some point that women are able to give birth, I've never seen it actually happen except on TV.
The other four things above no one has ever told me, I've just seen it.
people fill gender roles based upon what they are taught,Very true, that helps explain WHY men and women behave (generally, in my experience) in different ways but it DOES NOT contradict my assertion that (generally, in my experience) they DO behave differently.
thus, saying "men are" or "women are" suggests something innate too easily.
I think you're guilty of jumping to conclusions here, based on what you've been taught or experienced. I am not trying to suggest anything innate at all. Though I do believe there are some (generally, in my experience) innate differences I've not said anything about them in what I've written so far.
― mei (mei), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:27 (twenty years ago) link
― Orbit (Orbit), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:29 (twenty years ago) link
― Orbit (Orbit), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:34 (twenty years ago) link
"twooo weeeeeeks."
― RJG (RJG), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:36 (twenty years ago) link
― Orbit (Orbit), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:38 (twenty years ago) link
― Herbstmute (Wintermute), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:43 (twenty years ago) link
"but whole numbers have just one property, namely what number they are."
------------------------That's not fair to the integers--they have lots of fun properties. 2, say, has the properties of being 2, the {square root of 2} squared, the square root of 4, the set of all numbers that satisfies (-infinity, 2) < x < (2, infinity), etc etc.
As far as feminism goes, Cixous can do but er um bell hooks is smartre. -- adam (hexenductio...), August 31st, 2003.------------------------
Okay, I was trying tacitly to _keep_ it to integers which would rule out yr root two problem but yes I should have used a better word than 'property'.
What I really want to say is that any number (cardinal, integer, rational real, or indeed any number (ONE DIMENSIONAL) NUMBER PEDANT!!! :-) )) _is_ (can be completely defined by/represented by) just a single number.
But saying a number is just a number whilst being true seems too tautological and I don't think illustrates what I was trying to get at. Once you know that the number you're talking about is, say, two then you know EVERYTHING about it.All the properties you listed immediately follow.
BTW this:
the set of all numbers that satisfies (-infinity, 2) < x < (2, infinity)
Is well dodgy. You're confusing numbers and sets.
I'm going to ignore the (slight) possibility that you're using x to represent a set here and defining < to operate on sets because you were talking of the _number_ 2 immediately above.(Yes, I know the integers can be defined as sets...)
Firstly you've not said what x is, reword to:the set of all real numbers x that satisfies (-infinity, 2) < x < (2, infinity)
I've said real to rule out the possibilty that something like 2<= 2 + i <=2 could cause a problem.
You want to include 2 in the ranges, so:the set of all real numbers x that satisfies (-infinity, 2] < x < [2, infinity)
But the less than relation is usually defined as being between two numbers, not a number and a range as you've shown, so you should have something like:the set of all real numbers x that satisfy 2 <= x <= 2
But this is still a set not a number, so what you really want is:2 is the unique member of the set of all real numbers x that satisfy 2 <= x <= 2
I bet I've made a stupid mistake in there, hope you have as much fun spotting it!
***MATHS SUB-THREAD ENDS***
I've no idea how this is going to look cos i can't get it past the HTML checker for now, but anyway...
― mei (mei), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:45 (twenty years ago) link
― tokyo rosemary (rosemary), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:48 (twenty years ago) link
― Ed (dali), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:51 (twenty years ago) link
― Orbit (Orbit), Sunday, 31 August 2003 17:54 (twenty years ago) link
I'd like to know too. I think women play just as big a part in Patriarchy as men, whatever it is.
"if you are male and you tell a sexist joke you don't have to wonder how it might make women around you feel, because the social pressure on them is so great you know they won't say anything about it"
not where I come from. -- gabbneb (gabbne...), August 31st, 2003.
Certianly not round here either.
― mei (mei), Sunday, 31 August 2003 18:07 (twenty years ago) link
I think the second paragraph here is gently 'silencing' women who are not active feminists.Perhaps the men who tell these jokes aren't doing it on purpose?
And about RJG's trolling. I think that's the disguise Arnold Swarzenegger's character wears in Total Recall when he's trying to get past customs, he says he's staying for "two weeks". When he's found out the woman's face splits open and reveal a man inside.
Still don't really see what that has to do with anything.
― mei (mei), Sunday, 31 August 2003 18:23 (twenty years ago) link
― Cozen (Cozen), Sunday, 31 August 2003 18:27 (twenty years ago) link
accepting trans and gender fluid identities would seem to mean accepting there is such a thing as a person's 'real' gender outside of 1. their physical sex and 2. how they are socialised and hailed or recognized by society - there's clearly a tension between that and radical feminist critiques of gender
― soref, Saturday, 15 June 2019 11:23 (four years ago) link
What are the radical feminist critiques of gender that I’m clearly missing then? Cos all I’m seeing are people engaged in constant vicious attacks on trans people and dogwhistling constantly about the safety of children.
― stress tweeting (gyac), Saturday, 15 June 2019 11:36 (four years ago) link
I'm not smart or eloquent enough to articulate this well, but this gets at some of what I'm trying to say:
When I say that a person is male or female - a man or a woman, a boy or a girl - I aim to convey *only* some brute facts about the body, related to sexual and reproductive anatomy and functions. Those brute facts are very far from socially constructed. I defend the concept of two, and only two, sexes, because they truly are the facts of life - a constraint on our existence that cannot be escaped.But, while I defend the reality of sexual dimorphism, I do not defend the gender binary, where ‘gender’ reflects social and cultural expectations of how each sex should think or act. The complexities of gender - by which I mean the social roles and expectations, cultural and symbolic significance, that societies attach to the sexes, and which are often socially, sometimes violently, enforced - were not the subject of my previous article. [trans and non-binary people] are actual males and females who are punished, bullied and vilified for acting in ways that are considered unacceptable for males and females to behave.
But, while I defend the reality of sexual dimorphism, I do not defend the gender binary, where ‘gender’ reflects social and cultural expectations of how each sex should think or act. The complexities of gender - by which I mean the social roles and expectations, cultural and symbolic significance, that societies attach to the sexes, and which are often socially, sometimes violently, enforced - were not the subject of my previous article. [trans and non-binary people] are actual males and females who are punished, bullied and vilified for acting in ways that are considered unacceptable for males and females to behave.
https://weeklyworker.co.uk/worker/1250/sex-is-not-psyche/
accepting that gender (rather than sex) is a 'real' thing, that some people just are men or women or neither in a metaphysical sense, separate from their physical sex or how they are 'gendered' by society - this legitimises the concept of gender, and gender can't be separated from this division into an oppressor and an oppressed class. a distinction between sex and gender where 'sex' is objectively observable biological differences and 'gender' is the socially constructed system that legitimises patriarchy, i.e. in this definition 'gender' is specifically what is socially constructed, what *isn't* 'real', what can be challenged and critiqued and eventually demolished and consigned to the dustbin of history
― soref, Saturday, 15 June 2019 12:29 (four years ago) link
and if accepting trans identities means supporting the idea that if one's gender identity does not match one's biological sex, then one can/should have their body modified to make it fit better, either with hormones or binding or surgery - this seems problematic if you believe that gender is purely socially constructed? why should these painful, potentially dangerous physical changes be necessary, why should there be a link between the physical form of your body and whether you are stereotypically masculine or feminine in your, thoughts, tastes etc?
you might say that physical modification is not compulsory and many trans ppl identify with a gender that doesn't match their biological sex without changing their body in any way - but from the radfem pov NO-ONE'S gender identity matches their biological sex, no-one is really inherently 'a male gender person' or a 'female gender person'. some trans ppl do not identify as male or female at all - but either you take the position that some people are male gender or female gender and some ppl aren't (which is incompatable with the radfem pov b/c no-one is really male gender or female gender), or the position that EVERYONE is not actually male gender or female gender, in which case you have reached a position that is indistinguishable from radfem perspective?
and even if body modification is not mandatory, the rise in ppl accepting trans identity and an inherent gender identity as a real thing has undeniably led to an increase in the number of people undergoing these body modifications with all the pain and suffering that involves. you might say that this is still an improvement and before scores of ppl were suffering in silence in bodies that they felt didn't match their identity, but as this kind of body modification becomes a socially accepted thing then doesn't that make it harder to fight for a world were ppl do not feel compelled to changed their bodies to match how 'masculine' or 'feminine' they feel? (or to avoid the harassment and abuse that comes with being gendered female?)
― soref, Saturday, 15 June 2019 12:56 (four years ago) link
idk sounds like concern trolling to me
― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, 15 June 2019 13:05 (four years ago) link
you might say that physical modification is not compulsory
and even if body modification is not mandatory
let me just state for the record: it's not
― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, 15 June 2019 13:13 (four years ago) link
Yeah I was going to say. You can consider this debate to be about lofty and abstract ideas about gender and sex, but that’s not how “gender critical” is used in the wild, and that debate is very much of an exclusionary nature.
― stress tweeting (gyac), Saturday, 15 June 2019 13:15 (four years ago) link
jesse singal wrings his hands similarly and constantly about FORCED BODY MODIFICATION FOR THESE CONFUSED CHILDREN WHO WILL REGRET IT and i continue to hope he explodes
― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, 15 June 2019 13:17 (four years ago) link
I hope the same for Glinner.
― stress tweeting (gyac), Saturday, 15 June 2019 13:20 (four years ago) link
but once you take body modification out of the equation then what is left aside from a feeling of disconnect between your biological sex and the stereotypical qualities associated with or demanded of ppl with that biological sex in our society? unless you think that gender is a 'real', not purely socially constructed thing, then this disconnect exists for everyone, although it causes some ppl a much greater degree of distress and pain than other. and accepting that gender is a 'real' thing has actual material effects on people's lives, just like accepting race as a 'real' thing has actual material effects on people's lives, it can't just be dismissed as 'lofty and abstract ideas'
― soref, Saturday, 15 June 2019 13:29 (four years ago) link
I think you’re confusing what I think. When I think of actual real effects on people’s lives, I’m thinking of how the constant demonisation and picking away at the right of people to live as they choose plays out in reality.https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/14/homophobic-and-transphobic-hate-crimes-surge-in-england-and-walesSo no, I don’t really give much of a thought to the “gender critical” side of the debate considering it seems mostly to be used as a shield for bigotry.
― stress tweeting (gyac), Saturday, 15 June 2019 13:35 (four years ago) link
generally i find people who hammer this hard on the ONLY TWO SEXES thing to be extremely fuckin suspicious
― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, 15 June 2019 13:38 (four years ago) link
i guess i am really trying to engage with the ideas in your posts soref but i don't seem to have the same stakes or perspective in this argument? like if body modification isn't necessary and one's personal conception of gender can be disconnected from their appearance and the social expectations others have of them... that's... cool? doesn't seem to undermine any critique of the patriarchy which forces social roles onto everyone? "real" and "purely socially constructed" also do not seem to be opposite ideas to me. and from being friends with trans people i get the sense that people who gravitate toward body modification have thought about all of this shit relentlessly and come out the other side knowing that "gender" is ultimately construction and the sum of their experiences have told them that they're women and/or men, and if they can feel more comfortable in their bodies while doing this... good? we put on makeup bc the external doesn't match the internal, it's all construction, and it doesn't seem inherently contradictory to me. that we share a fundamental idea about gender with radfems is great except that transphobes in that community use it to undermine, exclude, and isolate trans people, it's a bad faith distortion on their part, which is the fuckin problem
― american bradass (BradNelson), Saturday, 15 June 2019 13:51 (four years ago) link
On a slightly different tack this looks like a really interesting book - has had a lot of heat on its lines around the abolition of the family.
Abortion is a form of necessary violence. We need to move away from arguments designed to placate our enemies, and defend abortion as a right to stop doing gestational work | @reproutopiaSophie Lewis is the author of Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family pic.twitter.com/qntnD2Zb3Z— Verso Books (@VersoBooks) June 7, 2019
― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 15 June 2019 13:57 (four years ago) link
that we share a fundamental idea about gender with radfems is great except that transphobes in that community use it to undermine, exclude, and isolate trans people, it's a bad faith distortion on their part, which is the fuckin problem
From what I've observed, I don't expect any productive discussion btwn radfems and trans communities for exactly this reason. I do believe there are earnestly non-transphobic radfems but they're too closely enmeshed with the assholes we all hate
― Simon H., Saturday, 15 June 2019 14:05 (four years ago) link
i was typing up a huge thing to try to engage with soref but brad said most of what i wanted to in a much more concise way so thank you very much brad.
there are and have been trans-positive radical feminists - there was an ideological divide amongst 70s radfems on the topic of trans people - but unfortunately the name of 'radical feminism' is very much tainted these days by the very vocal transphobes.
― ufo, Saturday, 15 June 2019 14:25 (four years ago) link
Over time I've become more accepting that there are groups whose frames of reference and basic understanding of reality are sufficiently removed from mine that good faith dialogue with them is impossible. I spend a lot less time arguing with people and more time trying to discern my own beliefs, because I at least trust that good faith dialogue with myself is still possible. :)
― Flood-Resistant Mirror-Drilling Machine (rushomancy), Saturday, 15 June 2019 15:22 (four years ago) link
Most of the time it's much more useful to argue without using blanket terminology and just give three specific examples in lieu of the term. No one is ever talking about the same thing as you usually.
― Yerac, Saturday, 15 June 2019 15:24 (four years ago) link
You can believe that race is largely socially constructed without then using a colourblind society which is not the case to steamroll over people’s lived lives; that cartoon people who believe that gender is bullshit find it so important to do this to trans ppl in particular suggests to me that these ppl are just arseholes
― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Saturday, 15 June 2019 15:45 (four years ago) link
*CERTAIN people lmao fml
― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Saturday, 15 June 2019 15:46 (four years ago) link
You can believe that race is largely socially constructed without then using a colourblind society which is not the case to steamroll over people’s lived lives;
I don't think this comparison works, TERFs aren't arguing that we live in a sex-blind society, or that we should act like we are. and most people who support the idea that you can identify as any particular gender regardless of your biological sex or socialisation as male or female would not support the idea that you can identify as any race regardless of what your physical appearance/dna/heritage or socialisation
― soref, Saturday, 15 June 2019 16:57 (four years ago) link
Was the Cherry Jones character (and the friends at the woman-fest) on Transparent supposed to represent "terfs"?
― Yerac, Saturday, 15 June 2019 17:10 (four years ago) link
yes. I thought the music festival episode was memorable
― Dan S, Sunday, 16 June 2019 05:30 (four years ago) link
this thread has been interesting and educational for me
― Dan S, Sunday, 16 June 2019 05:32 (four years ago) link