Why is feminism so stigmatised?

[Cawn]

I think the thread question should be changed to “Which genders’ issues are the most important to address?”.

The thread is legitimately full of people who focus on womens’ issues and then people go on mens’ issues and then people go “no this issue is more important!!” type of beat.

[Alba Lata]

I think the thread question should be changed to “Which genders’ issues are the most important to address?”.

The thread is legitimately full of people who focus on womens’ issues and then people go on mens’ issues and then people go “no this issue is more important!!” type of beat.

Yes, let´s change the title, so that the answers given about feminism´s image problem (that were critical of present-day feminism) suddenly have less relevance.

Moving goalposts has seldom been so obvious.

[Nilokeras]

and like it's the same story repeating itself across so many slices of society. it's why people think that 20% of the population is trans (real percentage: 1%) or that 36% of the population are in a union (real percentage: 4%). notions like this get amplified and distorted and remixed until they lose all bearing on reality altogether.

You would not believe the way I cackled at seeing this oh my god. 30% of the nation being Jewish too, lmfao

It is probably one of the single most important polls put out in the 21st century because it’s the skeleton key for *so much* of modern politics

like you can see the panics about illegal immigration tie into the fact that people think that 40% of the country is Hispanic, or panic about trans people when they think 1 in 4 people are trans. It’s this nasty feedback loop between right wing narratives around an epidemic of transness or cross border invasions that leads people to concoct entire alternate realities that live just over the horizon.

Or more directly here with feminism, where people imagine an era from like 2011 to 2016 dominated by these woke feminist tyrants that made men afraid to spread their legs on the subway or whatever, even when they were old enough and tuned in enough to what living in that time was like.

[Ostroeuropa]

The fundamental epistemological claims of feminism rely a number of buy-ins that ensure adherents become at odds with others and mistreat them, as well as necessitates a growing fondness for authoritarian means due to their ideocratic conceptualization of equality. This coupled with its structure leading to interpersonal misandry in many cases (Largely as a consequence of its fundamental epistemic misandry and the hostility this engenders towards men not complying) and lacking a mechanism to deal with it, leads to people disliking feminists.

viewtopic.php?p=43992307#p43992307

This is a good example of one of the underlying epistemological behaviour feminism trains adherents to engage in.

[The New South Hardwick]

Most feminists see nothing wrong with certain patriarchal societies, so I consider 98% of them fake.

[-Saiwania-]

Feminism ran out of things to do and has lost in the long term but not the short term. There is probably going to be a rollback whenever the next pendulum swing happens.

[New haven america]

Most feminists see nothing wrong with certain patriarchal societies, so I consider 98% of them fake.

Less so patriarchal societies and more so patriarchal roles that benefit them

Given that most women generally prefer benevolent sexism to actual equality

[Ostroeuropa]

Most feminists see nothing wrong with certain patriarchal societies, so I consider 98% of them fake.

Less so patriarchal societies and more so patriarchal roles that benefit them

Given that most women generally prefer benevolent sexism to actual equality

I think the issue isn't so much that they prefer a particular arrangement to any other and consider it "More fair", it's that they have constructed an elaborate set of tools to make themselves wilfully hermeneutically ignorant such that they can justify ideocratic demands alongside their demands being broadly incoherent. (That is, they want others to perceive them as helpless when it benefits them, not when it doesn't, but they also want to remain ignorant of this and not have to consciously invoke it, and they want others to not point it out about them).

If it were the case that most women turned up, were self-aware of their preferences, and argued that's what they want to happen, it would not so much matter if those preferences involved differing treatment so long as they were prepared to also take on board mens input in defining what a fair society looks like rather than;

1. We have incoherent demands
2. We want to remain ignorant of our own flaws
3. Our testimony and views are fundamentally worth more than others and we will adopt a dogmatic conceptualization of equality that aligns with our own preferences to justify this

And so on and so on. But those are the big three.

The core of equality is a participatory understanding of it, in my opinion. What outgrowths that have are far less relevant. If men and women all broadly agree a particular set of things is equal, then it is. We might use ideology to justify our own positions or reject others, but it can't actually describe some essential quality of equality. That's where feminism falls apart too.

Feminism fundamentally rejects this because it is an essentialist worldview, and thus, equality cannot actually be achieved so long as feminism is tolerated in society. The most you can get is feminist conceptualizations of equality imposed by ideocratic means, which is an unstable system.

Here's my understanding of feminism;

Feminism is a set of conceptions about equality, power, and gender dynamics. A feminist is someone who adheres to conceptions within this set. The boundaries of the set are subjective and as essentially contestable as its contents, with maximalist and minimalist understandings all possible.

The reason most people say they are not a feminist (And why most anti-feminists say they are pro-equality) is because their conceptions of equality fall outside that set. And the reason many feminists struggle to come to terms with this is that they subscribe to conceptions of those things which are essentialist in nature (Which is just about the only way we can confidently say somebody is flatly wrong about what equality is).

If you think "You cannot be anti-feminist and support equality" makes sense, you do not understand the nature of equality as an essentially contested concept, and your feminism is a form of essentialism. Feminists for whom this does not apply are forced into conceding the validity of other conceptions of equality (And, funnily enough, are often not recognized as feminists by anti-feminists, who own conception of the "Set" which constitutes feminism excludes them and defines feminism as necessarily inclusive of essentialist conceptions of equality, which are admittedly the most popular. Patriarchy theory for example relies on essentialism).

Often, the essentialist form of feminism produces a crisis of definition which reduce it to absurdity (necessitating the inclusion of practically everybody, including MRAs, as feminists, and thus undermining the real reason the person identifies as a feminist: Identification with the body of work of feminists on these topics and leaving them in psychological tension with their identity under threat), or necessitating a conspiratorial and paranoid view of critics where you are forced into denying they "Really" believe in equality in order to exclude their body of work from feminism (Without evidence beyond "Your opinions are different from ours therefore you must be a liar about your motives", an outgrowth of the psychological crisis essentialist feminism causes adherents). Alternatively, it results in epistemic injustice where you insist they simply "Don't understand" rather than have different evaluations of those concepts.

Effectively then; A feminist is someone who has opinions about power, equality, and gender relations which align them with the feminist movement in terms of group-identification.

Feminism is a set of conceptions about power, equality, and gender relations produced by individuals of that group.

Within that, there can be drawn a distinction between essentialist and non-essentialist forms of feminism.

Essentialist feminism can be safely written off as a basic epistemological error and so defined as "(E) Feminism is a mistake of fact regarding equality, power, and gender relations". N-E feminism can be defined as "(NE) Feminism is a set of conceptions about power, equality, and gender relations which are produced by people who identify with the feminist movement and recognized as originating from it or useful to it and its framing of these discussions".

A non-essentialist feminism would rapidly involve no longer identifying as a feminist as a consequence of the current testimony of men regarding feminism, and would likewise involve rejecting the claim that feminism is the movement in favor of gender equality rather than a specific articulation of a particular view of it. This is a huge concession which would result in acknowledging that this view has been unduly privileged for almost a hundred years and thus all of its activities should be re-evaluated with this in mind and revised.

Identifying with a body of work and then adopting the position of "Society should actively work against this for a while and concede to its critics" is a very difficult psychological manoeuvre which all but ensures that when someone tells you "I am a feminist", you can be pretty safe in assuming they are an E-Feminist.

Given these fundamental flaws with feminism as a worldview and how a feminist is merely "Someone who identifies with those flaws", the dislike of them is pretty self-explanatory.

[Vonstania]

It’s a matter of how SOME feminists present themselves. Particularly the radical ones and the misandrists ones, which advocate for feminism in such a negative way that it would naturally have people dislike feminism. And also, it’s feminists advocating for the wrong things. Like for instance, the psychos defending Lindsay Clancy, and the hypocritical MeToo movement, which failed to maintain neutrality towards all political figures regardless of alignment. Of course, some people hate on feminism just out of misogyny, but if feminism as a movement wants to be more respected, they need to present themselves better, and deliberately remove the bad elements within the movement itself. I personally support equality between both male and female, and I do believe that the wage gap is still substantially unfair, but cmon, yall got to do better

[Ostroeuropa]

It’s a matter of how SOME feminists present themselves. Particularly the radical ones and the misandrists ones, which advocate for feminism in such a negative way that it would naturally have people dislike feminism. And also, it’s feminists advocating for the wrong things. Like for instance, the psychos defending Lindsay Clancy, and the hypocritical MeToo movement, which failed to maintain neutrality towards all political figures regardless of alignment. Of course, some people hate on feminism just out of misogyny, but if feminism as a movement wants to be more respected, they need to present themselves better, and deliberately remove the bad elements within the movement itself. I personally support equality between both male and female, and I do believe that the wage gap is still substantially unfair, but cmon, yall got to do better

Why are the bad elements drawn to feminism in your opinion?

[Northern Socialist Council Republics]

I generally consider myself a feminist because I live in a country built on top of this hell portal of social conservatism and hierarchical impunity. But it is entirely possible that, had I been born in a society where basic human dignities are better guaranteed and thus the need for a feminist movement less desperately obvious, I'd be more negatively polarised by the unhinged nonsense that keeps coming out of this movement.

These idiots don't speak for feminists globally.

Has anyone seen Gallo on the forums recently? I recall he had the most complete roster of quotes in NSG from respected academics and movement leaders demonstrating that this sort of thing is, in fact, very representative of the intellectual leaders of this movement.

and like it's the same story repeating itself across so many slices of society. it's why people think that 20% of the population is trans (real percentage: 1%) or that 36% of the population are in a union (real percentage: 4%). notions like this get amplified and distorted and remixed until they lose all bearing on reality altogether.

It is honestly a serious political problem that human brains are wired for narrative stories, not statistical understandings of common events.

Different issue, but the late Prof. Rosling oft complained about how, because people's understanding of what life is like outside of the little corner of Earth they live on is the news, the most shocking violence affecting the poorest parts of the world ends up stereotyping the vast majority of humanity. A "news channel" that presented yearly changes in developmental statistics would not have any hopes of retaining enough viewers to pay the bills. Nobody finds that [expletive] exciting. So it goes.

Less so patriarchal societies and more so patriarchal roles that benefit them

Given that most women generally prefer benevolent sexism to actual equality

And yes, this is also true. "Women can do anything" right up until the discussion is about conscription policy and they're all suddenly silent for some reason.

[Forsher]

I hope this post doesn’t come off as ignorant or naïve, but I’m genuinely so confused as to why everyone on the Internet (atleast in the corners I hang out in) seem to universally hate feminism and feminists. I actually identify as a feminist myself (I support gender equality), so I’m quite confused why people seem to treat as an equal to things far worse.

I know this post is very short (arguably lazy, even), but I just had to get this question off my chest.

(No, this post isn’t satire)

What's the saying "dickheads are more hateable than monsters"? Something like that.

Online feminists are generally incredibly smug and respond to all criticisms with "but we do care about men; feminism is the equality movement for all genders". Or, lately, "TERFs aren't really feminists" when, of course, the whole point of TERFs is that they hate transwomen because of their feminism. Not that people should really be hitting feminism over the head with the existence of TERFs; the point is just to illustrate how bad online feminists are at talking like people who have any interest in not being hated. They could just say "radical feminism is not all feminism" but that sounds suspiciously like "not all men" so they don't.

If feminism was a bunch of academics writing papers with titles like "Woman is the N***** of the World: Decolonising Feminism" people would care about it a lot less.

[The Lone Alliance]

This thread makes me very sad.

Women can honestly communicate their problems today, and the response is "but what about the male suicide rate?". If a man does the same, he's told about the wage gap. It's quite the indictment of our culture that this breed of thinking is commonplace.

Well look at what you're comparing.
Men increasingly killing themselves out of despair is an equal problem to an idea that women aren't being paid exactly the same as men?

The problem with every sort of identity group is that it eventually turns into oppression Olympics and it's getting harder and harder for feminists to continue to insist that they are number one there when they argue about things like that and hold it up to the growing list of men stating their own issues.

This is also why Feminism keeps splitting up on racial lines too, because if you dive into the oppression Olympics, minority women have far more to complain about.

[Chess Socialism]

The problem with every sort of identity group is that it eventually turns into oppression Olympics and it's getting harder and harder for feminists to continue to insist that they are number one there when they argue about things like that and hold it up to the growing list of men stating their own issues.

This is why we need to stop looking at these types of unique experiences like a pyramid. It's not X group is less oppressed than Y group, it's that X group is treated in such a way that might harm them more regarding Y and Y group is treated in such a way that might harm them more regarding X.

[The Great-German Empire]

Can we just talk about oppression/disadvantage in a way that rewards concrete help, punishes concrete hurt, but does not try to always bend every conversation and every interaction over a barrel of calculation of how supposedly unequal it is? We've drawn battle lines where there should be peace negotiations. I don't want to be a counter-revolutionary, I want to be a father and a husband - and yes, I'd prefer being a provider because of my instincts, and it's not wrong for me to have that urge as long as I'm not deluded into thinking up some perverted emotional domination fantasy.

[UNITYUNITYUNITY]

Can you explain why any of these statements are wrong? I disagree with some of them myself, but I'd like to hear it from the horse's mouth, as it were.

Because they miss the mark in absurd points and feel like being upset at men and the world and wanting to believe they are behind everything you don't like.

The first two I believe are stupid for obvious reasons I hope I don't have to explain.

I agree that the first one is stupid, in a vacuum. I'm not entirely convinced this isn't a bastardized telephone game version of someone's legitimate feminist reading of urban architecture, though.

The second one, though, could have some merit. An office manager choosing to keep the air conditioning particularly low has a more significant effect on women, on average. This is a labor condition exclusionary toward women, which pushes women out of the workplace. This is structural sexism. It's minor, but it is real.

Men spreading their legs in public is because of how men's reproductive organs are structured, and while men are far more confident to open their legs in such a way because of cultural motives, them doing that is not sexist at all.

It's true that men have to spread their legs somewhat more than women for biological reasons, but they do not have to do it to the exaggerated extent that many do. Why does culture make men more willing to inconvenience others in this regard?

And "drag queens being sexist because they parody women" I believe is them most valid of them all really, in a way I could see why some parts of it could've seen as black face-ish. But regardless most drag people laugh at sexism rather than at women, while black face laughs at blacks rather than at racism.

I'm not sure that it's true that drag audiences are laughing per se at anything, but if so, it's certainly not sexism. What's attractive about drag (and here's where Butlerians would disagree with me) is that in hyperaestheticizing gendered signifiers and then applying them to the opposite sex, it creates an ephemeral spectacle that serves to reinforce normative gender precisely through its inversion. The audience can be titillated by the grotesque and leave assured that nothing about themselves or society has been shifted out of place afterwards.

[PUTAT]

Mostly a result of a minority radical feminists taking it way too far beyond just equal rights. This spawn misandry, which itself bolsters misogyny. This led to stereotyping of feminism which in turn allowed the minority of radicals to slowly but surely get more extreme and have a justification for it. This, in turn, led to a counter reaction to some of this radicalization and increasing division. And it has been cycling through like that for a while. Honestly, I miss the days when it was just about equal rights and safety. Do we still have a few issues? Yes, but the minority of radicals continue to blow issues out of proportion, which leads to the same cycle of issue x feeds into issue y, which feeds into issue x.

I say minority of radicals because I genuinely hope that it is just media amplification that makes the radicals look like a majority.

This is the most likely statement out of all which could be the closest to the reality. The modern misandry bullshit didn't do well to improve the public image of feminism after all.

It's fortunate, then, that feminism isn't misandrist, despite what anti-feminists like to say.

No. Misandry is a serious issue in the internet just like the entire manosphere & the trans panic (referring to Murican conservatives throwing several baseless accusations of someone being a transgender individual although the people being accused are still connected to their biological gender as well as equating being transgender with having weird fetishes) btw.

[Mettaton-EX]

3. That's just a statement of fact. The oppression of non-white/non-Western women only matters in so far as how Western/white women can use it to claim victimhood over.

this was flagrant projection when richard dawkins did it and it's flagrant projection now

[The Two Jerseys]

The same reason communism is: there's nothing stopping the people with the more unhinged beliefs from calling themselves one, and they draw the most attention from the general public by virtue of being unhinged.

[Ushastan]

feminism is an incredibly broad term and thus its easy to slam ¨feminist¨ onto many things involving women, and if you say it derogatorily enough some people will dislike it
if we define feminism as womens liberation, liberation from oppression, misogyny, patriarchy, and economic dependence, then i am in support of it.
if we define it as merely adding some women to the oppressors, dropping bombs on west asia and north africa under the pretext of ¨liberating women¨ among other reasons, (looking at you, hillary clinton). then i am against it.

[Ferrocarriles Argentinos]

Should anything that reinforces the "objectification of women" be forbidden? Isn't it tyrannical for you to want to forbid anything that doesn't work for your worldview?

yes

[Alba Lata]

Objectification is a loosely defined term, and liable to be weaponised in a dozen ways to oppress the innocent.

Whoever sets the standard for the interpretation of the word gives themself the power to remove dissent or non-compliant behaviour in general.

[Tom Berenson Memorial Hub]

Because of J.K. Rowling, that’s why!

[Ferrocarriles Argentinos]

This thread in a nutshell:

Q: why is feminism stigmatised

Answer1: you have an image problem because of loud and hateful voices

Reaction1: Image problem? Cite sources or it doesn´t exist!

sources are cited

Reaction2: Those sources are all explainable / excusable / justifiable / taken out of context / invalid / other reason why answer may not have to be accepted

general observation is made that there are really a lot of specific sources

Reaction3: no specific sources for general observation, therefore general observation is false, and also sexist / toxic / other moral flaw

Reaction4: Also, the Internet just amplifies everything, so it doesn+t really count

Answer2 (or 3, or 4): you still have in image problem, because you never contradict the loud voices that give you said image problem

Reaction5: BUT WE HAVE ALREADY SAID THAT WE DON´T HAVE A PROBLEM!

Answer - sigh: Then why the question?

Reaction6: BECAUSE WE SAY SO

When no answer is given anymore, Reaction 1,2,3,4,5,6 highfive each other, and congratulate themselves on being right all along, and on sticking it to the "anti-feminist repliers".

None of the answering voices have changed their position though. They just feel they can´t win, and have stopped replying. And feminism stil has an image problem.

strawman fallacy btw

[Tekania]

I hope this post doesn’t come off as ignorant or naïve, but I’m genuinely so confused as to why everyone on the Internet (atleast in the corners I hang out in) seem to universally hate feminism and feminists. I actually identify as a feminist myself (I support gender equality), so I’m quite confused why people seem to treat as an equal to things far worse.

I know this post is very short (arguably lazy, even), but I just had to get this question off my chest.

(No, this post isn’t satire)

Several things at play here.

First, there are feminists, but there are also people who are misandrist that call themselves feminists.

Secondly there are those who don't really want to get rid of the patriarchy, because they enjoy what it gives them. TERF's are especially like this, because they don't strive for gender equality, they strive for special carveouts for women in the patriarchy.

That goes hand in hand with the concept also that to the person who us privileged by the patriarchy... equality looks like oppression to them. Because it costs them their privilege.