Feminists, Please Explain to me this.

[Angleter]

Feminism is bollocks, they want to restrain all peoples freedom. "Criminalize strip clubs, Criminalize prostitution(check) Criminalize selling alcohol in stores after three o`clock, Criminalize being nude in public." That is the motto of the Norwegian Feminist.

That's the uber-radical feminist, the sort that believes in 'freedom from' rather than 'freedom to', the kind that normal feminists rail against- as Margaret Atwood did in the Handmaid's Tale. There's also the Germaine Greer sort of feminist, who claims that all men hate women, that real freedom for women would involve the mass cultural sexualisation of teenage boys, and that "equality" is a bad thing since it would be women "submitting" to assimilation into male society. Both are distinctly wacky in their views, yet both manage to bullshit enough to get themselves into mass media and paint themselves as 'the feminist movement'.

[Grainne Ni Malley]

IME, it's women that do the majority of slut-shaming, just like it's men who do the most of enforcing that other men don't look or act feminine.

I can't really say there's a majority in either direction. I've found sexism is pretty scattered between men and women. It depends mostly upon the individual.

I think many people are simply inclined to pass judgment on others for a multitude of varying aspects. Musts haz hatrid.

[Queen Lucinda]

We weren't there in victorian times.....and we dont ask women to rub there short skirts in our faces. its just wrong for young girls to have those sorts of role models today, because it isn't right, just like its not right for a guy to be a slut [[sorry didn't have any other word to use]] either. women can do what they want, and wear what they want just like men can, but not as role models for young girls

[Coccygia]

The OP reminds me of the old fable (by Aesop?) about the man who met a satyr in the forest one winter day. The satyr invired the man to his home. As they walked the man blew on his hands. "Why are you doing that?" asked the satyr. "To warm my hands," the man said. At the satyr's house the satyr served the man a bowl of soup. (Friendly satyr.) Te man blew on the soup. "Why are you doing that?" asked the satyr. "To cool it," the man said. "Get out of here!" shouted the satyr, "I will have nothing to do with someone who can blow hot and cold with the same breath!"

Which is why the OP was effectively answered by the 2nd post in this thread.

[Augarundus]

In both cases it's about societal pressure for women to present themselves in a rather extreme way whereas men get given a (comparatively) free hand.

Idk.

Today the pressures are meant to promote sexual appeal, rather than some irrational vision of "morality" defined by a 2000 year old Jewish zombie.

The latter is a cult, the former is an emphasis on a very enjoyable human biological function. I seem to think that the latter has more value...

[Unhealthy2]

Feminism is bollocks, they want to restrain all peoples freedom. "Criminalize strip clubs, Criminalize prostitution(check) Criminalize selling alcohol in stores after three o`clock, Criminalize being nude in public." That is the motto of the Norwegian Feminist.

Feminism is not necessarily against sexuality. Feminists should not be against men viewing women as sex objects. What they should be against is viewing women as NOTHING BUT sex objects. Men and women are sex objects. The problem arises when one thinks that that's ALL they are.

Many sex-positive feminists are fine with non-exploitative pornography, non-exploitative prostitution, and all sorts of interesting kinky sex, as long as no one involved has been coerced.

[Shikkago]

for one thing, there are different types of feminists with different viewpoints. Some feminists describe ourselves as "pro-sex", ie we are pro-porn, tho we tend to prefer more feminist porn (ie more variety in female body types, empowered females). Some feminists are idiots who suck, sure. But who cares about them? They don't get to hijack the whole freakin' movement!

More and more contemporary feminists are what I wouldn't even want to call a "feminist" because the focus is on gender equality for everyone across the gender spectrum (ie intersexed ppl, straight guys, transgender folks), not limited to females. So feminism is a complex, contentious, ever-evolving school of thought.

That being said- a woman being forced to cover her body and a woman being encouraged to put her body on display are sort of two extreme results of the same mentality- a societal focus on women's bodies as sexual objects. On the one hand, the woman is being told that if she displays her body at all, that men who might (in the extreme way of thinking, which you do hear sometimes) rape her have no responsibility for their behavior because they just couldn't help themselves. On the other, women who are typically told the previous message (to a lesser degree contemporarily) are acting out a sort of ritualized sex fantasy, which is fine, awesome even, but..

I personally always got skeeved out as a teen watching these scenes because there didn't seem to be much respect being shown to the women involved, like at fests when one girl would bare her breasts and then all the rest of us had to endure calls for us to do likewise when we might not have been comfortable. Sometimes It didn't seem that they were doing it for themselves, but that they were at least seen (by men) as doing it for men, as if their own sexual agency were absent. Now I know that it's more complicated than that, but this is just how it made me feel. Especially since I generally didn't see guys treated equally like meat. It can be really fun to treat the object of your (or someone else's) desire like meat, if it's in a situation that's fair, but when it's always the (skinny etc.) woman and never a man, that's almost like you're completely ignoring that straight women even exist or matter to you.

As a dyke who is realistic and into science, I can appreciate that people who are attracted to women have a tendency to want to see their bodies in a sexualized way, it's natural, and I don't think there's anything intrinsically bad about it. The issue to me, or IMHO to anyone rational, is not that it is bad for women to display their bodies or their sexuality. To me, the problem is when these women are seen as "dumb sluts" and degraded; it's also that one standard body type is displayed, when we all know that different ppl are attracted to diff body types. I get the "submissive" kink aspect of doing something "for" a man and getting off on that, or being degraded and getting off on that, but it seems like there's a fine line and when that line gets crossed, it brings up issues of sexism for me.

Frankly, I'd like to see women be legally allowed to go topless as they like. Breastfeed in public, take our shirts off at the beach or at a hot indoor concert, without fear of being stared at, groped, or arrested. I know this is possible in many other cultures in the world, so any hysteria about possible results is nonsense to me. I'd like to see us have more of a right to display our bodies if we like. There's nothing wrong with ritualized sexual display, with sex work, with casual nudity, if we can all agree to be adults about it and self-police the creeps. I feel like the "Girls Gone Wild" (which I have no prob with) stuff is a result of prudishness in our (American) culture, and if we were more liberated sexually women could be more empowered to express themselves this way but also our naked bodies could be viewed as not necessarily sexual, or at least that even if you find us sexually arousing doesn't mean you have a right to treat us with creepy disrespect or worse.

...Women are used to being treated like sex objects in our daily lives. Every woman has stories of the boss, the boy at school, the guy on the train who grabbed her, verbally harassed her; way too many have stories of assault or attempts at it. The problem is not that these creeps exist (always have, always will) but the blame-the-victim response wherein women are taught to just put up with it, or maybe they shouldn't dress that way or go out at night. Instead, we have to take more responsibility to tell our guy friends, bros, and sons, "don't be a creep", "do not rape", to criminally prosecute rapists when possible, and to speak out against sexism. That's why I get sick of people complaining about "feminazis", tho I myself find actual feminazis very irritating, bc it seems like an "easy out" to label all feminists as loonies for people who don't want to bother examining the problems that still linger in our society thanks to sexism.

So yea, I know that was long but I have a lot to say on the subject I guess. Because I am really very pro-sexual liberation but I do think we need to also take into account that we have to discourage sexism and restrictive gender roles in order to truly liberate our sexuality.

At any rate, the solution to bad speech is more speech- guys like you who probably really are feminists (you do believe women should have the right to vote, right? so you're at least kind of a feminist) at heart shouldn't be so scared off by the loud uptight idiots of the movement that it prevents you from being advocates for women. You can start your own gender equality group!


BTW, this is just another reason why punk shows are awesome- girls in the mosh pits, girls taking off our shirts when we get hot and sweaty without any fear of getting harassed, boys in dresses crowd-surfing overhead- so fun.

[Vecherd]

Then the entire aspect of feminist organizations in Norway should be ignored.

All feminist organizatoins in Norway are sex-negative? Still, it doesn't mean that all Norwegian feminists are.

Exactly, that is why I said organizations and not feminists.

[Geniasis]

The OP reminds me of the old fable (by Aesop?) about the man who met a satyr in the forest one winter day. The satyr invired the man to his home. As they walked the man blew on his hands. "Why are you doing that?" asked the satyr. "To warm my hands," the man said. At the satyr's house the satyr served the man a bowl of soup. (Friendly satyr.) Te man blew on the soup. "Why are you doing that?" asked the satyr. "To cool it," the man said. "Get out of here!" shouted the satyr, "I will have nothing to do with someone who can blow hot and cold with the same breath!"

Which is why the OP was effectively answered by the 2nd post in this thread.

So Aesop hated cold soup?

[Kazomal]

The OP reminds me of the old fable (by Aesop?) about the man who met a satyr in the forest one winter day. The satyr invired the man to his home. As they walked the man blew on his hands. "Why are you doing that?" asked the satyr. "To warm my hands," the man said. At the satyr's house the satyr served the man a bowl of soup. (Friendly satyr.) Te man blew on the soup. "Why are you doing that?" asked the satyr. "To cool it," the man said. "Get out of here!" shouted the satyr, "I will have nothing to do with someone who can blow hot and cold with the same breath!"

Which is why the OP was effectively answered by the 2nd post in this thread.

So Aesop hated cold soup?

Right on

[Aeronos]

Feminism is bollocks, they want to restrain all peoples freedom. "Criminalize strip clubs, Criminalize prostitution(check) Criminalize selling alcohol in stores after three o`clock, Criminalize being nude in public." That is the motto of the Norwegian Feminist.

That's the uber-radical feminist, the sort that believes in 'freedom from' rather than 'freedom to', the kind that normal feminists rail against- as Margaret Atwood did in the Handmaid's Tale. There's also the Germaine Greer sort of feminist, who claims that all men hate women, that real freedom for women would involve the mass cultural sexualisation of teenage boys, and that "equality" is a bad thing since it would be women "submitting" to assimilation into male society. Both are distinctly wacky in their views, yet both manage to bullshit enough to get themselves into mass media and paint themselves as 'the feminist movement'.

The reason they got into mass media was because they got themselves academic recognition, and employed that as a raised-soapbox to write extreme versions of what was going on in those days. So sort've bullshitting yes, just a lot more formal!

Germaine Greer is the embodiment of going so far in response to an issue that you become the same as what you're fighting, in this case, opposing chauvinism so much you basically become one yourself. I mean, she would hate the living hell out of me, and I am female. I embrace female social attributes (for example I don't just not have short hair, I have very long hair, and I pretty much never go out without makeup), which she deemed as submission to patriarchy. I see males and females not as gender representatives, but as simply individual people, whereas she deemed females who like males as submitting to the patriarchy. I'm a gender egalitarian, which you already covered. I'm bisexual, and hence not exclusively lesbian, which... same reason. I also tend to be highly submissive in relationships, which she would hate for the same reason. And I'm more than perfectly okay for people to do with gender boundaries as we did with the Berlin Wall. Transsexuals, transvestites, in both directions, all fine by me, and she hated all of them, seeing FtMs as traitors and MtFs as insurgent vermin. Seriously, there should be a point where "feminist" becomes obsolete as a term. People like her are just straight-out authoritarian; they don't care about the furtherment of female rights.

</rant>

Fortunately not many people take the radicals like her seriously any more. Most self-proclaimed feminists are less feminists than gender egalitarians in the modern age, which does kind've make the term "feminism" redundant but hey. Depending on your use of definition I'm either just a feminist, both a feminist and a masculinist, or neither and simply a gender egalitarian. It's just a shame that the actions of vocal extremists once again paints a bad picture over the quiet moderate majority

[Ryadn]

Feminism is bollocks, they want to restrain all peoples freedom. "Criminalize strip clubs, Criminalize prostitution(check) Criminalize selling alcohol in stores after three o`clock, Criminalize being nude in public." That is the motto of the Norwegian Feminist.

Feminism is not necessarily against sexuality. Feminists should not be against men viewing women as sex objects. What they should be against is viewing women as NOTHING BUT sex objects. Men and women are sex objects. The problem arises when one thinks that that's ALL they are.

Many sex-positive feminists are fine with non-exploitative pornography, non-exploitative prostitution, and all sorts of interesting kinky sex, as long as no one involved has been coerced.

'Beauty makes sex possible. Beauty makes sex sex.'

Hence why I always refer people to Nussbaum's essay on objectification. Because there are acceptable and necessary forms of objectification, and unacceptable and harmful forms.

[Bottle]

Feminism is bollocks, they want to restrain all peoples freedom. "Criminalize strip clubs, Criminalize prostitution(check) Criminalize selling alcohol in stores after three o`clock, Criminalize being nude in public." That is the motto of the Norwegian Feminist.

Feminism is not necessarily against sexuality. Feminists should not be against men viewing women as sex objects. What they should be against is viewing women as NOTHING BUT sex objects. Men and women are sex objects. The problem arises when one thinks that that's ALL they are.

I am totally fine with feminism being against men viewing women as objects, and men viewing men as objects, and women viewing women as objects, and women viewing men as objects, and all other-gendered permutations of same. Objectification is crummy, I don't care who is doing it or who is receiving it. People are PEOPLE, and it's always a lousy thing to do to ignore that another human is, well, human.

Remember that viewing somebody SEXUALLY does not equate to OBJECTIFYING them. You can find somebody wicked sexy, you can want to screw their brains out, you can oggle their various parts, you can have all many of sinful notions...and never objectify them. Likewise, you can have perfectly chase and non-sexual ideas about somebody that still reduce them to an object.

Frankly, one of the things that sickens me most is the way that objectification and sexualization have become conflated, at least in my culture. It's gotten to where people aren't even clear on how you'd separate the two. That is, to me, a serious and dangerous problem. I believe the world would be a far, far, happier place if we could address it.

[All Awesome People]

In both cases it's about societal pressure for women to present themselves in a rather extreme way whereas men get given a (comparatively) free hand.

So you are saying that in the case of the victorian era, women were pressured to not be sexualized in public, but in the modern days, it is about how women are pressured for the exact opposite. ok

In other words, just too much pressure