Feminists today: are they doing it wrong?

[Greater Beggnig]

It is perfectly appropriate for persons in the western world to not donate to charities because they still have to pay their bills and buy consumer goods.

Are you saying that is untrue?

Sorry, should have clarified that, I was referring to dispensable income.

[Forsher]

Such as?

It is perfectly appropriate for persons in the western world to not donate to charities because they still have to pay their bills and buy consumer goods.

Yes. This is very simple.

In fact, it's probably better that they don't. Charities are the biggest hoodwink since indulgences.

[Forsher]

Are you saying that is untrue?

Sorry, should have clarified that, I was referring to dispensable income.

You probably mean discretionary income. Not that this affects my argument and, likely, Allanea's either.

[Ashyaria]

i wish i could make my text massive, but i can't because you people would hate on me


FEMINISM IS A TERM THAT HAS BEEN FIRST BEATEN TO A FINE PULP, CUT UP, MASHED, AND BUTCHERED. IT MEANS SOMETHING DIFFERENT FROM WHAT IT MEANS IN THE DICTIONARY.

I fucking hate people who are 'anti-feminist' because there are idiots out there who will say "OMG HE RAPED ME EVEN THOUGH HE NEVER TOUCHED ME!".

Those are called feminazis.

Feminism, from the merriam-webster dictionary:

fem·i·nism noun \ˈfe-mə-ˌni-zəm\
: the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities

: organized activity in support of women's rights and interests


In modern culture, it means this:
"The 'fight' for female supremacy"

[Allanea]

It's entirely acceptable not to donate to charity (I personally donate to SENS.org and the Cato Institute).

However the entire point of a charity is that you are not obliged to donate, you're doing them a favor.

[Greater Beggnig]

i wish i could make my text massive, but i can't because you people would hate on me


FEMINISM IS A TERM THAT HAS BEEN FIRST BEATEN TO A FINE PULP, CUT UP, MASHED, AND BUTCHERED. IT MEANS SOMETHING DIFFERENT FROM WHAT IT MEANS IN THE DICTIONARY.

I fucking hate people who are 'anti-feminist' because there are idiots out there who will say "OMG HE RAPED ME EVEN THOUGH HE NEVER TOUCHED ME!".

Those are called feminazis.

Feminism, from the merriam-webster dictionary:

fem·i·nism noun \ˈfe-mə-ˌni-zəm\
: the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities

: organized activity in support of women's rights and interests


In modern culture, it means this:
"The 'fight' for female supremacy"

I agree completely. But the term is lost. It's quite like how 'Communism' is now forever associated with Stalinism and Bolshevism.
When 'communist' could no longer be used to describe the more peaceful socialist movements in countries like the UK and Germany, the word social democrat (in other words, me) was invented.

[DnalweN acilbupeR]

Yes, OP, and they have been for a long time now.

[Tahar Joblis]

I don't know if I agree with this.

I mean, you are right that Tumblr-feminism is a really really unhealthy place, but I think there are many cultural issues that feminists (both male and female) can and should address, like the portrayal of female sexuality in media and educational material, the pepetration of negative and unconstructive stereotypes of women, rape culture, etc. These are real, serious issues, they might not rise to the point of women being stoned in the streets but they still are serious issues.

Should talk about? Yes. Should address? In some cases and in some ways. If Dworkin & Co had their way, pornography would be illegal instead of protected as speech. I'm rather fond of the First Amendment, and in fact wish it were treated as covering more rather than covering less.

Can? I am doubtful.

The portrayal of female sexuality in media and educational material breaks into two main issues as feminism perceives it: "Sexual objectification" and "slut-shaming."

• The battle against slut-shaming has gone so well that promiscuity is now strongly disrespected both in men and in women. This is the most prudish generation in decades.
• The battle against sexual objectification of women has gone so well that almost every magazine cover and novel cover that shows a person on it and is marketed to women is an exercise in objectification of a man or a woman.

With feminist messaging on the topic being highly variable and uncoordinated, the net message from feminists on the portrayal of sexuality is that anything a woman does is fine and anything a man does is evil. (Radical feminists have even attacked drag queens in very stern terms.) The resulting degree of "progress" is unsurprising.


Negative and unconstructive stereotypes of women? Great, let's attack them. Except that horrible sexist stereotypes aren't limited to women. We've gone incredibly far in the last fifty years in deleting the portrayal of negative sexist stereotypes of women; most of the room for progress is in the portrayal of men, and it's going to be hard to reduce the remaining level of gender-stereotyping without dealing with the stereotypes of men, because stereotypes of women tend to re-form as reflected images of stereotypes of men. Which I don't see feminists bestirring themselves on in any great numbers any time in the foreseeable future.


Rape culture? Largely delusion, the way it's usually described. In reality, rape of women by men is, in modern Western culture, one of the near-universal abhorrents. The cases where rape is trivialized, the victim is blamed, the rape's existence is denied, or the rape is condoned almost all have one of two key features: Male victim or female perpetrator. That's the real rape culture. Feminism isn't fixing that.


Radical feminism tends to blame things on "the patriarchy." The idea is that problems women have are things men do to women. The main problem with this approach in terms of solving women's problems is that other women are the main source of most problems women face for being women, including things like slut-shaming. And then the bigger problem with this approach to problems of gender equality is that men have problems, as well.

[Tahar Joblis]

It is perfectly appropriate for persons in the western world to not donate to charities because they still have to pay their bills and buy consumer goods.

Yes. This is very simple.

In fact, it's probably better that they don't. Charities are the biggest hoodwink since indulgences.

Some charities get a lot of good done; some just eat a lot of money and duck around the tax man. I would disagree with the generalization, though it is well worth being leery of charities.

[Allanea]

Should talk about? Yes. Should address? In some cases and in some ways. If Dworkin & Co had their way, pornography would be illegal instead of protected as speech. I'm rather fond of the First Amendment, and in fact wish it were treated as covering more rather than covering less.

You know full well that not all feminists are anti-pornography feminists.

The battle against slut-shaming has gone so well that promiscuity is now strongly disrespected both in men and in women

The battle against slut-shaming is a recent phenomenon and cannot be fully blamed for this generation's prudishness (OTOH, idiots like Dworkin can, because they're providing a secular, 'progressive' backing for prudishness.)

With feminist messaging on the topic being highly variable and uncoordinated,

That's because the term 'feminism' covers a broad variety of opinions.

[Tahar Joblis]

You know full well that not all feminists are anti-pornography feminists.

And the mixed messaging on pornography by feminists is why very little will be accomplished by feminists on the portrayal of female sexuality in media.

The battle against slut-shaming is a recent phenomenon and cannot be fully blamed for this generation's prudishness (OTOH, idiots like Dworkin can, because they're providing a secular, 'progressive' backing for prudishness.)

The battle against slut-shaming is not recent. Feminists played a key role in the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s.

The issue of selective slut-shaming of women was brought up at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848, widely viewed as the point of origin for the "First Wave" from the American perspective. Resolved on the first day:

Resolved, That the same amount of virtue, delicacy, and refinement of behavior, that is required of woman in the social state, should also be required of man, and the same tranegressions should be visited with equal severity on both man and woman.

Resolved, That the objection of indelicacy and impropriety, which is so often brought against woman when she addresses a public audience, comes with a very ill grace from those who encourage, by their attendance, her appearance on the stage, in the concert, or in the feats of the circus.

And then hammered into the Declaration of Sentiments in this line:

He has created a false public sentiment, by giving to the world a different code of morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude women from society, are not only tolerated but deemed of little account in man.

This is concerned with the sexual double standard. The initial resolutions actually make it clear there are two different concerns:

1. Women being subjected to slut-shaming based on public appearance, e.g., on stage.
2. Men not being subjected to slut-shaming.

The traditional double standard is pretty close to gone. It's just that we've ended up in a place where someone is going to crap on you as a man unless you're in a stable, monogamous, yet visibly regularly sexual union with a woman, and some woman will crap on you as a woman for being promiscuous if you seem promiscuous. I don't see any reason to believe feminists will cause this to improve.

[Allanea]

And the mixed messaging on pornography by feminists is why very little will be accomplished by feminists on the portrayal of female sexuality in media.

The problem with this concept of a 'mixed messaging' by feminists is that there is not - unlike many people, both feminists and anti-feminists like to portray - a single 'feminist' movement which somehow needs to develop a joint viewpoint on issue X or Y.

Imagine we applied this to any other movement within which there are disagreements. Progressives, for example, disagree on drug legalization.

"mixed messaging on drugs by liberal is why very little will be accomplished by liberals"...

If I said this about liberals you would imagine that I am partisan and am attempting to bash the American left.

Or take an identical attack on conservatives. Conservatives profess to hate Big Government, but you can find any number of conservative and Republican politicians to support any number of Big Government programs - the miltary-industrial complex, Medicare, etc. (Remember the argument by some Republicans that Barack Obama was attacking Medicare?)

"mixed messaging on Big Government is why very little will be accomplished by conservatives"... this would clearly be a biased partisan misrepresentation of how conservative politics work.

[Dyakovo]

The entire mission of liberal feminism was to have rights equal to men and protection against discrimination, and that's done.

I love how your link doesn't even come close to supporting the claim you put in the text for the link.

[Esternial]

I'd rather that whomever supports equal rights/etc. for men and women just use "egalitarianism".

Because there a groups of people that hold certain viewpoints (misandry, discrimination of trans* and overall hypocrisy/repeated use of faulty logic) that somehow believe they are "feminists", giving the entire movement a bad name.

At least a term such as "egalitarianism" makes it hard to adopt any kind of discrimination without losing their association with the movement.

[Tahar Joblis]

The entire mission of liberal feminism was to have rights equal to men and protection against discrimination, and that's done.

I love how your link doesn't even come close to supporting the claim you put in the text for the link.

Liberal feminism is an individualistic form of feminist theory, which primarily focuses on women’s ability to show and maintain their equality through their own actions and choices. Liberal feminists argue that society holds the false belief that women are, by nature, less intellectually and physically capable than men; thus it tends to discriminate against women in the academy, the forum, and the marketplace. Liberal feminists believe that "female subordination is rooted in a set of customary and legal constraints that blocks women’s entrance to and success in the so-called public world", and they work hard to emphasize the equality of men and women through political and legal reform.[1]

1. Work through political and legal reform.
2. End discrimination in terms of customary and legal restraints.

As distinguished from radical feminism, that is pretty much liberal feminism in a nutshell. This in turn comes out of the meaning of the word "liberal" from "liberties," aka "rights."

Radical refers to root, as in seeking the root of the problem. Per radical feminism's ideological analysis, this is "patriarchy."

Are there still some people running around identifying themselves as "liberal feminists" and not "radical feminists"? Not particularly many, and of the second wave feminists listed on the "liberal feminism" page, no small number identify themselves as "radical." NOW may have been founded as a liberal feminist organization; but published a glowing eulogy of Andrea Dworkin.

There's not really a neat division of feminists into liberal feminists and radical feminists, mind you. But it's entirely possible to sort out a liberal ("rights-based") feminist mission (largely accomplished in the modern West) and a radical ("root-of-the-problem") feminist mission (still ongoing).

[Greater Beggnig]

I love how your link doesn't even come close to supporting the claim you put in the text for the link.

Liberal feminism is an individualistic form of feminist theory, which primarily focuses on women’s ability to show and maintain their equality through their own actions and choices. Liberal feminists argue that society holds the false belief that women are, by nature, less intellectually and physically capable than men; thus it tends to discriminate against women in the academy, the forum, and the marketplace. Liberal feminists believe that "female subordination is rooted in a set of customary and legal constraints that blocks women’s entrance to and success in the so-called public world", and they work hard to emphasize the equality of men and women through political and legal reform.[1]

1. Work through political and legal reform.
2. End discrimination in terms of customary and legal restraints.

As distinguished from radical feminism, that is pretty much liberal feminism in a nutshell. This in turn comes out of the meaning of the word "liberal" from "liberties," aka "rights."

Radical refers to root, as in seeking the root of the problem. Per radical feminism's ideological analysis, this is "patriarchy."

Are there still some people running around identifying themselves as "liberal feminists" and not "radical feminists"? Not particularly many, and of the second wave feminists listed on the "liberal feminism" page, no small number identify themselves as "radical." NOW may have been founded as a liberal feminist organization; but published a glowing eulogy of Andrea Dworkin.

There's not really a neat division of feminists into liberal feminists and radical feminists, mind you. But it's entirely possible to sort out a liberal ("rights-based") feminist mission (largely accomplished in the modern West) and a radical ("root-of-the-problem") feminist mission (still ongoing).

Radical feminism sounds eerily Marxist to me. Change subconscious class interest to subconscious male privilege and away you go.

[Dyakovo]

I love how your link doesn't even come close to supporting the claim you put in the text for the link.

Liberal feminism is an individualistic form of feminist theory, which primarily focuses on women’s ability to show and maintain their equality through their own actions and choices. Liberal feminists argue that society holds the false belief that women are, by nature, less intellectually and physically capable than men; thus it tends to discriminate against women in the academy, the forum, and the marketplace. Liberal feminists believe that "female subordination is rooted in a set of customary and legal constraints that blocks women’s entrance to and success in the so-called public world", and they work hard to emphasize the equality of men and women through political and legal reform.[1]

1. Work through political and legal reform.
2. End discrimination in terms of customary and legal restraints.

As distinguished from radical feminism, that is pretty much liberal feminism in a nutshell. This in turn comes out of the meaning of the word "liberal" from "liberties," aka "rights."

Radical refers to root, as in seeking the root of the problem. Per radical feminism's ideological analysis, this is "patriarchy."

Are there still some people running around identifying themselves as "liberal feminists" and not "radical feminists"? Not particularly many, and of the second wave feminists listed on the "liberal feminism" page, no small number identify themselves as "radical." NOW may have been founded as a liberal feminist organization; but published a glowing eulogy of Andrea Dworkin.

There's not really a neat division of feminists into liberal feminists and radical feminists, mind you. But it's entirely possible to sort out a liberal ("rights-based") feminist mission (largely accomplished in the modern West) and a radical ("root-of-the-problem") feminist mission (still ongoing).

That's it, pretend that you were just defining what liberal feminism was, and also claiming that the goal of liberal feminism has been accomplished.

[Dumb Ideologies]

There's an increasing disjuncture between academic edu-theoretical feminism and activist feminism.

The former is pluralistic, progressive and engages with complex questions as to what "woman" and "man" mean, how to further the rights of gender minorities and how to make life more easily livable to all in a gendered world. etc. But, however easy it might be to exaggerate the phenomenon, there's clearly a certain resurgence of radical feminism with the online activist communities with the much-maligned tumblr being one of the main headquarters. This includes some very distasteful currents, such as TERFism, anti-pornography zealots, conspiracy theorism and misandry. Unfortunately, as a result of a quite thorough policy of entryism these ideas are getting spread around enough to emerge from the fringes. You can see this quite clearly in some of the "rape culture" discourse which drastically stretches and misuses the word "rape" to near breaking point and has strong echoes of the "all men are potential rapists" unhelpful radicalism that I thought feminism had grown out of in the second-wave.

Activist movements are going to have to re-fight the battles of the 70s and 80s and root out the loonies in their midst in a genuine battle of ideas - "no platform"-ing and such tactics are crucial to defeat a well-organized and dangerous threat. As things stand, despite finding third-wave feminism rich and quite interesting (with the exception of some of the trendy gender-abolitionism queer hipsterism), I for one am not willing to describe myself as a feminist.

[Great Kleomentia]

I have a penis and therefore i am too biased and stupid to have a opinion on that topic.

[Olivaero]

They could certainly be doing better and present a more united front on certain issues. If a lot more feminists worked hard to distance themselves from mysandrists That'd probably help too. Understand I'm not saying they are responsible for what mysandrists say I'm saying it would help their public image if they did. Also if they stopped bickering with MRA's and worked to address some of their more reasonable concerns it would help. But I have a feeling a lot of them would see that as submitting to the patriarchy rather than working together like sensible adults.

[Olivaero]

(with the exception of some of the trendy gender-abolitionism queer hipsterism).

Whats wrong with Gender Abolitionism?

[-The Unified Earth Governments-]

I have a penis and therefore i am too biased and stupid to have a opinion on that topic.

:Chop:

How about now?

I kid, I kid.

But really, you can have an opinion on it

[Tubbsalot]

They could certainly be doing better and present a more united front on certain issues. If a lot more feminists worked hard to distance themselves from mysandrists That'd probably help too. Understand I'm not saying they are responsible for what mysandrists say I'm saying it would help their public image if they did. Also if they stopped bickering with MRA's and worked to address some of their more reasonable concerns it would help. But I have a feeling a lot of them would see that as submitting to the patriarchy rather than working together like sensible adults.

Likewise, if left-wingers worked harder to distance themselves from communism and Stalin, it'd help. I'm not saying Stalinists are their fault, but they should be required to explicitly draw a line. What's the alternative? People concede that there are different kind of left-wingers, and most of them are perfectly reasonable? No, they're all communists, or something. The left wing has been tainted and now everyone must self-classify as part of the free-market capitalist libertarian region of socioeconomic policy. This makes perfect sense.

[Great Kleomentia]

I have a penis and therefore i am too biased and stupid to have a opinion on that topic.

:Chop:

How about now?

I kid, I kid.

But really, you can have an opinion on it

It's steel, you can't cut it!

Well my original post, while a joke, had a point and a opinion to it. While i do support equal gender rights, i do think that lately feminists have been getting totally out of touch with feminism. They don't want equal rights, they want more rights than men, and are acting hateful. Probably because most of them have no guy to ride on and have too much free time. Or they're simply ignorant and like to bash. Either way, most feminists i encounter aren't feminists.

[Narthakka]

It is perfectly appropriate for persons in the western world to focus their social efforts on the western world.

Didn't you hear, it's now our responsibility to drag everyone else into the 21st century. For some reason.