Feminism: The War on Feminism

[Basseemia]

The Suffrage movement and the Feminist movement were completely different.

The Suffrage movement was to change institutional laws. The Feminist movement was to change social rules.

First wave feminists did not just fight for the right to vote and feminism still did not start with the second wave (nor has it ended there).

I'm talking about the Feminist movement. Historically speaking, the women following the Feminist movement were the first real feminists since that is where the terminology came from, where the feminist ideals came from, etc.

[Dakini]

It's funny too because I've seen Basseemia in other threads and didn't think she was an anti-feminist so the OP mostly just confused the fuck out of me.

I am not a fucking anti-feminist.

Read all my posts.

I didn't say you were. This is why your OP, which comes across as anti-feminist confused me. I still think your OP was not very well-written or conducive to the discussion you wanted to have because (as Tubbsalot already explained pretty well) you can't start a discussion about a group by going through negative stereotypes and then going "oh, but that's not how it really is" without it getting misinterpreted.

[Dakini]

First wave feminists did not just fight for the right to vote and feminism still did not start with the second wave (nor has it ended there).

I'm talking about the Feminist movement. Historically speaking, the women following the Feminist movement were the first real feminists since that is where the terminology came from, where the feminist ideals came from, etc.

Which feminist movement? There have been many and there are many. The first wave feminists are largely considered to have gotten the ball actually rolling when it comes to women getting tangible rights (at least in so-called Western nations) and personally, the ideals of the 1950s and 1960s feminists are definitely not my ideals (for instance, I don't think excluding women of colour or transwomen is such a great idea).

[Basseemia]

I'm talking about the Feminist movement. Historically speaking, the women following the Feminist movement were the first real feminists since that is where the terminology came from, where the feminist ideals came from, etc.

Which feminist movement? There have been many and there are many. The first wave feminists are largely considered to have gotten the ball actually rolling when it comes to women getting tangible rights and personally, the ideals of the 1950s and 1960s feminists are definitely not my ideals (for instance, I don't think excluding women of colour or transwomen is such a great idea).

Okay, colored women and men were excluded in practically everything and people didn't even think of transwomen because they probably didn't even know they existed.

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

Because it is structurally relevant to the anti-feminist forces in control of society and popular perception that this happens.

Lest you forget that this is not just a society where women suffer, but where men are privileged, oppress non-men and non-compliant men, and perpetuate the system, often through passive indoctrination of women.

Oh yeah, I'm totally indoctrinating women

You aren't simplistic enough to not understand the logic of group as an agent vs individual as an agent.

If I am privileged for taking part in that group, and this privilege as a whole derives something out of someone else to the degree they are harmed, it is part of oppression too, even if it unintentional. We all are taught to internalize and perpetuate these behaviors as normal parts of life and interactions, and it is hard to de-construct it when the dominant social message is one that puts people down.

That's not at all saying we are unethical or malicious as people, just that our status in itself already means a potential negative net effect on someone we might interact with, if we do wrongful things that to us would just be mindless, self-defensive, benevolent or natural.

[Dakini]

Which feminist movement? There have been many and there are many. The first wave feminists are largely considered to have gotten the ball actually rolling when it comes to women getting tangible rights and personally, the ideals of the 1950s and 1960s feminists are definitely not my ideals (for instance, I don't think excluding women of colour or transwomen is such a great idea).

Okay, colored women and men were excluded in practically everything and people didn't even think of transwomen because they probably didn't even know they existed.

So you admit that the ideals of feminism have changed since the 1950s since women of colour are no longer excluded (or at least some people are trying not to exclude them) and some attempts at including transwomen have been made (except by assholes)?

Also, fyi, the term "feminism" was coined in the 19th century, which you may note comes before the mid-20th century.

[Basseemia]

http://www.geledes.org.br/o-racismo-inverso-existe-e-precisa-ser-combatido/#axzz3K5FzL6q2

Reverse racist does indeed exist and should be fought.

Once again shall we talk about racism, but now about a sort of racism that happens with excessive frequency, that I'm even almost daily remember by this indeed tangible threat by fellow militants that personally know me. Yes, my friends, I will talk about REVERSE RACISM. This discrimination against white people from black person, this perverse racism that has always existed and that continues to add enormously lately, not just in our country, but in the whole world.

As a start, let me clarify: prejudice is that idea of something or someone that we have (in our mind and in our hearts) without even get to know them. Discrimination is the act of expose, expel, propagate the prejudiced idea, with absurd levels of hatred and ignorance, that makes us elaborate discourses with shallow reasoning, but full of offensive attack to something or someone. While racism, well, racism is something that we need to look at history so that we can explain it, but I should inform you that, according to my friends, only there is the racism of black people against white people.

Indeed, for me to work more this point, we should turn back in time a bit and see how all of this started so as to all of us manage to analyse wit calm the consequences of this tragic past that insists in contemporaneously harming us. I really wish you all to not be scared with the relates of the oppression as lived by the Caucasian people:

“It was the African continent's peoples that put a collective effort in an imperialist journey in the search of more land to conquer and more power. Their first stop was in the European continent. Yes, might you imagine, that as they looked upon a totally different culture, the Africans united themselves and made a way to make the European people believe they were of an inferior race, that they were cursed, that they did not have a soul and that they would need to work a lot for them to redeem their existences, but even with this 'hard work', they still couldn't get free from this so-called curse.

After convincing the Europeans, the Africans stole their land, their natural resources, enslaved them, separated their families, profited from slave work and didn't pay them a single nickel.

For centuries they used their land, exported their workforce to other continents also conquered by African leaders. They forced the Europeans to get out of their lands and to travel for days and days inside a vessel chamber without ventilation, dividing their space with rats and the ones to have already been dead that wouldn't survive such inhumanity.

They raped the women and forced them to work while pregnant. Killed, enslaved and sold their children. Wonder, you people, how heartless of a folk. What about letting them without the rights awarded to the common people for more than five centuries? How about to let the entire European population without a safe guide, forcing them in the future to abandon their homeland in the search of a better life in the African continent?

Summarizing this terrible account and taking it to modern day, we can then perceive that the continuous oppression even past the end of the European people's slavery. Most Caucasians live in the outskirts of the actual cities, often in shanty towns. When they go to schools, they tend to be of a low quality, not enough to reliably detach themselves from the fate common sense would imagine they'd follow. Young white people are killed by police forces in the more developed black-majority countries everyday. White people are watched over and followed by security personnel whenever they enter in stores with a typically middle and/or upper class consumer base. We don't commonly see white politicians even in countries where they are central to the national culture and history, and represent a relevant fraction of the population. On the TV, on billboards, in the fashion world, there is little if any representation of white people, that are only definitely visible as representing of their black-majority home countries through the sporting world, but, even so, they still suffer prejudice. But they are still defended by some black people who launch awareness campaigns such as #stop talking about racism or #we are all polar bears (this is a long story more related to Brazil's race relations, but I think you can get the gist).

As if that wasn't enough, white people have to swallow black humorists that abuse of stereotypes to take a jab over them. "They just don't know how to dance", says Babalu Gentiki. "They become red when they are ashamed", says with loud guffaws Ko Joases. Oh, about beauty standards? I was already forgetting about them. For years black people humiliated and laughed over white people, what made them to hate their bodies, their facial traits, their skin color. In this beauty standard it is expected that "acceptable" white women curl their hair, have naturally wide or widen their noses, and use various techniques to make their lips fuller. Their men fully shave their head hear, for it is laughable according to common gender roles to try to curl them (after all, women are the ones most supposed to show themselves respectable through appearance).

There is a group of Caucasians that are self-professed justice-seeking egalitarians, but actually only want to seek privileges to this lazy people that doesn't want anything to do with finding a real job. They ask for affirmative action in Universities, more representation, equality and respect. Something related to an equality statute in some laws... but nobody cares about any of that."


We actually know that indeed happened and still happens, but the characters are inverted. If all of that had indeed happened with Europeans, would then make sense for us to believe that what we now brand "reverse racism" indeed is real. But I feel so much for disappoint you and say that this title is a fallacy. It exists and is visibly permanent, in Brazil and elsewhere, an attempt of showing the oppressed in the light of actually an oppressor group to the majority.

To finish and avoid any possible confusion in text interpretation I use this citation from Fran Vasconcelos that I believe to have a very important function in the understand of what is racism and how it inserts itself in a social context:

"Racism is a system with material and historical senses, it is not subjective. It is a manner of social organization in which a 'race' is hierarchically above another, affirms itself as the paradigm of human existence, naturalizes itself as the rule and oppresses all the others [as unnatural]. Racism is not a subjective, individual attitude, it just is manifested through agents in the form of common people. It is structured and added within the frames of society, in the manners in which this society organizes and perpetuates itself, in the job market, in the media, among the victims of violence, among the prison system members, among the poor in the whole world, as a relationship between those who detain private property and means of production and those who do not."

-

Could you then draw a parallel to discussions of feminism that solely center around how supposedly bad and victimizing it is as a movement only relevant for how it puts the huge threat to human condition that is misandry into practice, such misandry defined through defining men as a privileged and indeed structurally oppressive societal group and social construct?

What the hell does this have to do with anything?

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

Feminism was founded by women for women, I don't think men starting feminist movements would be looked upon favorably. Not to say that feminism is about female supremacy but it isn't something men should be organizing and running.

As unpopular as it might be for one to say so, but I really don't know how something about female emancipation and empowerment can be led by people who were taught themselves to see their position of class power before them as something natural and who did not actively experience a distinctive misogynistic oppression versus other kinds.

It really goes against logic.

[Basseemia]

Okay, colored women and men were excluded in practically everything and people didn't even think of transwomen because they probably didn't even know they existed.

So you admit that the ideals of feminism have changed since the 1950s since women of colour are no longer excluded (or at least some people are trying not to exclude them) and some attempts at including transwomen have been made (except by assholes)?

They've modeled to fit the social progress of the 21st century but still are on the foundation of the ideals from the 50s and 60s.

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

What the hell does this have to do with anything?

Feminism is about the oppression of sexism, so are many kinds of oppression that are perpetuated through a social hierarchy that is perpetuated through defining one group as normal state of humanity and the other as a naturally submissive class.

If your feminism is primarily concerned with the opinion of men in how much it is evil and unfair against them, then its first priority is already a misled one.

[Anglo-California]

Basseemia made a comment about how feminism''s bad image because a few unbecoming people hurt the movement's goals by acting like retards.

Clearly she hates women on the level of Donald Draper.

[Avenio]

I always find it amusing that the people who complain most about 'radical feminists' never seem to be able to actually name any of them, nor quote anything they actually said. We're supposed to believe that they exist, are numerous and powerful within feminism, but are also completely silent and unknown.

Big Red? The Femitheist?

Without googling.

[Basseemia]

What the hell does this have to do with anything?

Feminism is about the oppression of sexism, so are many kinds of oppression that are perpetuated through a social hierarchy that is perpetuated through defining one group as normal state of humanity and the other as a naturally submissive class.

If your feminism is primarily concerned with the opinion of men in how much it is evil and unfair against them, then its first priority is already a misled one.

You just talked about reverse racism for 99% of your post.

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

Feminism is about the oppression of sexism, so are many kinds of oppression that are perpetuated through a social hierarchy that is perpetuated through defining one group as normal state of humanity and the other as a naturally submissive class.

If your feminism is primarily concerned with the opinion of men in how much it is evil and unfair against them, then its first priority is already a misled one.

You just talked about reverse racism for 99% of your post.

It was a translation.

Put it in context.

Swap white people's concerns for concerns over misandry and how stinky and ugly and revolt-causing and de-legitimizing it is.

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

Basseemia made a comment about how feminism''s bad image because of a few unbecoming people hurts the movement's goals.

This is a false mindset.

There will always be people who will single out activist movements by how they might be perceived as threats to the status quo and thus unnatural abominations that should be censored from public light lest they defy the accepted status of those upper in the social hierarchy and the social obedience such naturalization generates.

[Washington Resistance Army]

I don't know, I don't think feminist has become a dirty word or anything but all those dumbasses on Tumblr have done a lot to ruin feminism's image here on the interwebs.

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

I don't know, I don't think feminist has become a dirty word or anything but all those dumbasses on Tumblr have done a lot to ruin feminism's image here on the interwebs.

Do we really want legitimization from a male-dominated place known for spaces like 4chan, YouTube and reddit?

If anything, as long as feminism is teaching stuff to people who suffer from some form of misogyny, be them women, men or non-binary people, it is already being helpful. Tumblr has been helpful in a lot of shit.

It doesn't matter if the overall reputation is that it's edgy and ugly and "ew, it is hostile about both our protagonism in life and our right to have our opinions taken seriously and at an equal or higher level of legitimacy than those of others on about everything, so let's bash it".

If it is a stream for people who are the underdogs to collectively sort their issues and think of them together, while gathering visibility and awareness to their own issues and subdivisions and other important information, then it is helpful and good.

[Archeuland and Baughistan]

Feminism - one hundred years ago:



Feminism - today:

#BanBossy

[Anglo-California]

Basseemia made a comment about how feminism''s bad image because of a few unbecoming people hurts the movement's goals.

This is a false mindset.

There will always be people who will single out activist movements by how they might be perceived as threats to the status quo and thus unnatural abominations that should be censored from public light lest they defy the accepted status of those upper in the social hierarchy and the social obedience such naturalization generates.

Or maybe people are just calling out bad behavior when they see it?

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

Or maybe people are just calling out bad behavior when they see it?

What is bad?

Most people I know who complain about tumblr's ideas on stuff complain also about absolutely harmless or correct stuff.

[Geilinor]

Basseemia made a comment about how feminism''s bad image because of a few unbecoming people hurts the movement's goals.

This is a false mindset.

There will always be people who will single out activist movements by how they might be perceived as threats to the status quo and thus unnatural abominations that should be censored from public light lest they defy the accepted status of those upper in the social hierarchy and the social obedience such naturalization generates.

Not all people who criticize feminism hate women.

[Tubbsalot]

Not all people who criticize feminism hate women.

No, that's true. There are also people who have mistaken The Hateful Tumblr Feminazi for absolutely all feminists, and therefore thinks feminism is crap; and there are people who have decided, contrary to the opinions of basically all feminists, that feminism only exists to reverse the direction of gender discrimination, and therefore thinks feminism is crap.

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

Not all people who criticize feminism hate women.

I know. I have a distaste for many factions of the feminist movement in my very country.

Nevertheless, denying a patriarchy and men's status as privileged and oppressor over other groups is not really grounded in reality. I don't really know of anti-feminism that also isn't defensive of the status quo when it comes to the social position of men in the given social hierarchy, or something worse.

[Degenerate Heart of HetRio]

Not all people who criticize feminism hate women.

No, that's true. There are also people who have mistaken The Hateful Tumblr Feminazi for absolutely all feminists, and therefore thinks feminism is crap; and there are people who have decided, contrary to the opinions of basically all feminists, that feminism only exists to reverse the direction of gender discrimination, and therefore thinks feminism is crap.

I can't say about tumblr, but I can about Facebook.

I know of people who are indeed misandrist, but most often they're radfems who are rude af even to trans people.

Over 70% of instances where men are met with intense abrasive attitudes from them occurs in instances where it'd be wiser for them to silence themselves or act more humble in stuff where their rudeness or skeptical criticism aren't really welcomed.

[Tubbsalot]

patriarchy

I'll admit, I'm curious if there is any situation in which the use of this word doesn't weaken your position.

If you're talking about the Orthodox church, I suppose.