Feminism - Distractingly Sexy Edition

[ElizabethB.]

Tummy flu? That would be gross.

[HexMachina]

Was just scrolling through the BBC News app (because I realised I don't pay nearly enough attention to current events) and came across this:

Firms forced to reveal gender pay gap
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35553573 

Guess it can only be a good thing. I think it's a fair comment about differences between part- and full-time work, but at the same time:

1) The disparity between men and women working part v full time could in itself be an issue, and

2) I'd like to hope people were intelligent enough to think through these things and understand that there may be other factors involved. Also, it doesn't see, as though there is anything preventing firms also publishing data on their part time v full time employees too, so if they were truly concerned I suppose they could publish that alongside the wage gap data.

[Lyanna Stark]

17 hours ago, ElizabethB. said:

"When a woman reaches ****** with a man she is only collaborating with the patriarchal system, eroticizing her own oppression." -- Sheila Jeffrys"

 

What is so awful it can not not be written? What  do the stars mean? 

That's from a feminist(?) site I think. 

experienceproject.com

 

If you enter her her name into google, you will come up with some articles regarding this woman as being a TERF, among other things.

As I explained, in some detail, in the internalised misogyny post, there are people calling themselves feminists with a very dubious claim to that label, or who are operating at the very fringes of what most people would label feminism. Which is fine, since people are allowed to have their own opinions. However, from what I can read in about 5 minutes, it seems her view on feminism is certainly not anywhere close to the mainstream.

17 hours ago, karaddin said:

Feminism is not a monolith and I don't think there are many on here who would see things the same way as that woman. I can't tell you what she's thinking and I don't want to.

Indeed.

While there are trends and lines of thought becoming more and more embraced, (intersectionality, oppositional sexism, discussions of internalised sexism, how women are depicted in digital media, etc) then others are certainly becoming far less popular, like for instance gender essentialism and the TERFs. (Sometimes loud, yes, but my distinct impression is that they are becoming louder because they are gradually becoming irrelevant, or marginalised.)

 

EDIT: Oh my, I found the source of all the whining yep. Someone has been reading Andrea Dworkin and angry second wave feminist stuff from the 70s and early 80s and are very upset.

As we can all tell, women are now ruling the world with an iron fist, killing all men and living the doctrine of the SCUM manifesto and Andrea Dworkin at her most angry, yes indeed. I also like how it was based in truth that an angry administrator at a University once said something dumb and that is somehow proof feminism is Doomed and Wrong, because millions of women must be wrong if someone, somewhere, who claim to be a feminist said something that was dumb, or wrong, or *gasp* angry and vindictive!! I would also be hesitant to take all those quotes at face value, as there are no proper references in the text. Andrea Dworkin published a number of things, for instance. As have McKinnon, Steinem, Friedan, Greer et al of the second waves. As was also pointed out in one of the commentaries, these are all old things. There is also the rebuttal of the "all sex is rape" commentary, which can be useful to read.

In general, a lot of books on feminism from the 70s and 80s are very coloured by their time, and the fact that they were written before Judith Butler's works means a lot of them, I think, are far more mired in fallacies of gender essentialism. I have mostly spent time reading Greer, but she has a lot of pretty dubious passages which I find are definitely lodged if not in it, then far too close to gender essentialism for me or most modern feminists, I would imagine. (The fact that she is also a TERF seems to lend credence to this.)

Interestingly, Simone de Beauvoir's 1949 "The Second Sex" is far better at not falling into the essentialist trap than many of the 70s feminists.

[Lummel]

17 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

EDIT: Oh my, I found the source of all the whining yep. Someone has been reading Andrea Dworkin and angry second wave feminist stuff from the 70s and early 80s and are very upset.

 

What strikes me is the amount of defensiveness, or maybe insecurity, or even ignorance (because occasionally I can do a bit of the old broad-mindedness) in reactions to Dworkin's statement.  One could just as easily admit that maybe she was right, but that we will rarely be able to see ourselves from a sufficiently objective standpoint to realise this for ourselves.

We can only speak for ourselves, and we only get to temper our own experience by listening to other people, and listening I understand that there are people for whom all sex is rape (say for example in some cases victims of sexual abuse, particularly in childhood) - that is simply the result of their experience, the product of their lives.  There Dworkin told us something profound about her life.  If that isn't somebody-else’s experience - well good for them.

The degree of defensiveness and insecurity that one can see in reaction to comments like those of Dworkin really says something about the power of, I don't know, the dominant social narratives maybe, that Feminism is in opposition to (loosely speaking) in the sense that one can look at the world differently.

[sologdin]

we had the 'all sex is rape' discussion in a RSB thread in 2011, regarding dworkin. what i thought then:

Quote

 

the relevant dworkin text is intercourse, which is basically a work of feminist literary criticism. there are statements therein regarding the coerciveness of heterosexual relations as they are represented in various texts that she analyzes. some reviewers drew the inference from those statements taken in isolation, amounting to "all heterosexual sex is rape," and then imputed their inference to dworkin as her implication, rather than imputing the aggregated inference to the textual sources from which dworkin drew the underlying premises, which should render the inference as the implication of no individual person, but simply a synthetic syllogism constructed from multiple writers (stoker, flaubert, and so on).

it is a stunning moment of deceptive antifeminist propaganda. whether it is the result of dishonesty or stupidity on the part of the original propagandists is an open but unimportant question, as far as i'm concerned.

 

 

[Lyanna Stark]

On 2016-02-13 at 0:16 PM, Lummel said:

 

What strikes me is the amount of defensiveness, or maybe insecurity, or even ignorance (because occasionally I can do a bit of the old broad-mindedness) in reactions to Dworkin's statement.  One could just as easily admit that maybe she was right, but that we will rarely be able to see ourselves from a sufficiently objective standpoint to realise this for ourselves.

We can only speak for ourselves, and we only get to temper our own experience by listening to other people, and listening I understand that there are people for whom all sex is rape (say for example in some cases victims of sexual abuse, particularly in childhood) - that is simply the result of their experience, the product of their lives.  There Dworkin told us something profound about her life.  If that isn't somebody-else’s experience - well good for them.

The degree of defensiveness and insecurity that one can see in reaction to comments like those of Dworkin really says something about the power of, I don't know, the dominant social narratives maybe, that Feminism is in opposition to (loosely speaking) in the sense that one can look at the world differently.

Yes, Dworkin certainly didn't have an easy life in this regards, from what I have read. The outrage also helps highlight something else, and that is the absolute outrage which happens when someone with a female body says "nope, not available, don't want it" to sex, both individually and generally. A female body which is unavailable is apparently the worst thing that can happen, almost ever, especially to MRAs. Who happened to do most of the complaining in this instance.

The Dworkin - McKinnon debacle and how controversial they were is interesting to view in light of their resistance to the pornography industry. You don't take on big money without consequences, it seems. (You can agree disagree with their points, but to argue with money and power is always fraught with peril).

 

On 2016-02-13 at 2:54 PM, sologdin said:

we had the 'all sex is rape' discussion in a RSB thread in 2011, regarding dworkin. what i thought then:

 

Indeed. Not to mention that the exact comment "all sex is rape" was misattributed to both Dworkin and McKinnon by other people.

 

Even so, let's play with the thought that all the MRAs were right about Dworkin's extremist and radical "agenda". Dworkin died in 2005 and had her heyday some 30 years ago. Enough time, I think, to enact Real Change (heh). If this "agenda" had indeed come to pass, people would then notice and the world would be an evil, oppressive matriarchy were women hold all the power, all the money, control men's bodies and men are paid 75% of the salary and do 80% of the housework. Yet clearly it hasn't, so all this hysteria over women who never want to have sex with men, women who want to kill men on a larger scale or the Death of Pornography has no basis in reality, since these things haven't come to pass. If this feminist revolution has happened, or is about to happen, then the world is definitely looking deceptively untouched by it.

 

EDIT: I have to admit to being more familiar with Greer of the second wavers. For some utterly bizarre reason, I had an easier time finding her works translated, way back when in the 90s. Never saw Dworkin at all, and only rarely Steinem. No accounting for taste among the translators, clearly.

However, it is somewhat strange to see the anti-feminist crusaders of today taking issue with stuff written 30-40 years ago, instead of the stuff written on feminism today, or at least more recently. Why is nobody interested in being upset about, I dunno, bell hooks and Judith Butler?

[sologdin]

judith butler may be a bit too conceptually labor intensive for the average MRA.

[butterbumps!]

Has anyone come across a truly hard-hitting article that exposes Ivanka Trump's misogyny apology for what it is?    From blog posts to more established media like Vanity Fair, it seems everything I see is downright fawning over this woman, who is basically an avowed supporter of racism and misogyny at this point (she's extremely involved in both Trump's campaign as well as explaining why he's also a feminist), and I'm struggling to understand why no one is giving her and her brand a harder time (that I can find, at least).   

At least in the fluffier, pop sphere, she'd become a darling of some mass media as feminist business guru of sorts.  Major women's mags are constantly interviewing her for advice on how to be a successful woman in business, she runs a blog about "women's empowerment" (it's basically a stream of bromides), and runs a "women who work" advocacy group.  All of which alleges to support women-- it's become her "brand."

I guess I have some anxiety over the fact that her calculated reasonable, gracious act and purported "women's empowerment" brand (shallow and meaningless as it may be) is not only a potential asset for Trump, but also doing a massive disservice to the struggle against sexism.   She has kind of set herself up as a "tastemaker" expert of the business world, and has some degree of influence over her followers.  So when she repeatedly reassures us that her father is actually a "feminist" (wtf), and cites such canards as "He's not misogynist because if he were he wouldn't have so many high-level women execs like myself" (paraphrased, but look up any interview with her post 2015) and the like, why isn't more of the media calling her out for this?    Or how she plays off Trump's misogynistic remarks about Megyn Kelly and Fiorina by, essentially, saying that he's an equal-opportunity insult-giver, and it has nothing to do with their gender?  (Despite how the insults themselves were super, gendered, of course.)  

I'm just getting really frustrated that I've yet to come across something that points out that she's essentially performing misogyny denial and endorsement, if not downright advocacy with these little defenses of her father.   I kind of want to do something about this, but am not really sure what that should be.   

[Dr. Pepper]

I've seen a couple of news outlets question Ivanka, including a recent Guardian opinion column, but for the most part nothing.  I think for the most part the media is treating her as the child of a politician, which by accepted rule is generally off limits, at least for anything negative. There may also be the fear of a huge backlash like the one received by Julia Ioffe, the journalist who profiled Melania.  But this doesn't really explain why the public hasn't made an effort to challenge Ivanka on her statements.  After all, the public doesn't hold to the 'don't speak ill of politician's children' rule.  Just look at the shit that was going around about Malia.  

So, I'm not sure.  I couldn't even guess the best way to address it in a way that would gain traction. She seems to have a huge base of support and so I'd think any attempts would be met with fierce opposition.  

[butterbumps!]

Hey, thanks for that article.   I hadn't seen that one particularly, which does at least point out her misogyny apology.  The criticisms of her that I'd come across tended to be along the lines of this Slate piece, more or less taking the attitude of "Ivanka's so awesome, so why is she backing her father?"

16 hours ago, Dr. Pepper said:

So, I'm not sure.  I couldn't even guess the best way to address it in a way that would gain traction. She seems to have a huge base of support and so I'd think any attempts would be met with fierce opposition.  

This is the part that concerns me.  Ever since she entered the spotlight back in the early 2000's, she's been quite fastidious about breaking the "spoiled brat, undeserving trust fund baby" stereotype.  She has the gracious, poised, etiquette thing down to a science.   To criticize her on most things-- especially character or earned level of success, for example-- makes the critic look like the jerk in light of this highly cultivated appearance.    It's basically the Marg Tyrell model of influence and power, and I do think this form of power is extremely potent.   Whether it's genuine or a savvy business move to push her company (which happens to be about selling work clothes to women ), her overall demeanor seems to have earned her a lot of favor from the media over time, and it's this appearance of perfect composure and graciousness that I suspect her strongest followers admire.   

But there has to be a way to more strongly condemn what's becoming, essentially, her misogyny.   I totally get that for a variety of reasons, the children of a candidate are seen as off-limits/ separate from their parent's campaign, and that Ivanka's cultivated a lot of favorability over the years that makes challenging her in particular undesirable to many.   But I think that when the child of a misogynist candidate has cultivated a brand around the concept of women's empowerment, and then goes on to deny and normalize the candidate's misogyny on record, she and her brand need to be challenged strongly, and frankly, lose credibility.  It's specifically that she holds herself up as some sort of authority on women's empowerment that this behavior goes beyond the acceptable limits.   Her active participation in defending misogyny should harm her brand.   

I think blog pieces are good, but I'd really like to see some of the mass media (like the women's mags who have been raising her up as a role model-- I suspect those readers form the majority of her base) stop giving her airtime (Cosmo is still holding her out as a women's empowerment authority as of 2 months ago, ffs), if not explaining her misogyny apology for the sexism it is, and asking readers to put their love affair with this woman at least on hold or something.    Writing in to the editors of those types of mags is one way I've been considering dealing with this, though I question the efficacy.  I definitely think it will be tricky to navigate for those who choose to tackle this, but I think freezing her out of the mainstream-- at least on the specific issue of her image as a women's empowerment guru-- is possible and quite critical.

[Lyanna Stark]

On 2016-05-09 at 10:51 AM, butterbumps! said:

eally like to see some of the mass media (like the women's mags who have been raising her up as a role model-- I suspect those readers form the majority of her base) stop giving her airtime (Cosmo is still holding her out as a women's empowerment authority as of 2 months ago, ffs), if not explaining her misogyny apology for the sexism it is, and asking readers to put their love affair with this woman at least on hold or something.    Writing in to the editors of those types of mags is one way I've been considering dealing with this, though I question the efficacy.  I definitely think it will be tricky to navigate for those who choose to tackle this, but I think freezing her out of the mainstream-- at least on the specific issue of her image as a women's empowerment guru-- is possible and quite critical.

Cosmo is hardly a progressive feminist publication tho?

Not to rain on them, but they kinda love the "feminist light" version of women who are empowered in a totally non-threatening way, like Ivanka. As you said, she has poise, grace, beauty, wealth and knows the ins and outs of etiquette. Her "empowerment" of women are all within the framework of what is acceptable non-threatening feminism, or re-labeling of feminism, to make it more palatable to more conservative forces. I mean, does she speak out for single mothers? About women's right to contraceptives? Planner parenthood? Violence against women? Or anything controversial what so ever? If not, then it's easy to be seen as a symbol for "empowerment" but essentially be meaningless.

[Channel4s-JonSnow]

Does anyone expect Ivanka Trump to do anything different? 

[Lyanna Stark]

3 hours ago, Channel4s-JonSnow said:

Does anyone expect Ivanka Trump to do anything different? 

Nope, the point of the argument was that someone should call her out on her faux-empowerment message. Which isn't really happening.

If you are a misogyny enabler, then you can't at the same time be some sort of empowerment woman and not raise eyebrows as being a raging bloody hypocrite, but apparently if you are Ivanka, you can.

[sologdin]

dunno.  is it possible that the 'empowerment' offered by mere liberal feminism (market participation, democratic participation, &c.) is as yet misogynistic from the radical or red feminist perspectives?

ETA--

i.e., the procedural egalitarianism offered by the liberals is great, and a step forward in comparison to the retrograde past of coverture &c., but it lacks a substantive egalitarianism provided by the radical/red perspectives, without which substantive egalitarianism the procedural egalitarianism loses much of its import.

[Stalker]

On ‎2016‎-‎05‎-‎11 at 3:19 PM, sologdin said:

dunno.  is it possible that the 'empowerment' offered by mere liberal feminism (market participation, democratic participation, &c.) is as yet misogynistic from the radical or red feminist perspectives?

ETA--

i.e., the procedural egalitarianism offered by the liberals is great, and a step forward in comparison to the retrograde past of coverture &c., but it lacks a substantive egalitarianism provided by the radical/red perspectives, without which substantive egalitarianism the procedural egalitarianism loses much of its import.

I don't see how that follows. The liberal position would be similarly uninterested in substantive egalitarianism for men.

[sologdin]

quite right.  but because of the weight of historical disadvantages in property accumulation, employment, and so on, the procedural egalitarianism is emptied somewhat of significance.  if, for instance, prior flight experience is required to become an airline pilot, it shall have been difficult for women to take advantage of equal employment opportunity if they had not been trained as pilots in the USAF, say.  

[Mlle. Zabzie]

A couple of things:

 

1.  I think we should be careful of labeling Trump misogynist.  I think it is reductive and untrue.  He unbelievably sexist (for him the patriarchy is uuuuge), but I do not think he hates all women.  Rather the opposite.  I think he very much likes, appreciates, and perhaps even loves (if he is capable of the emotion) women, provided they stay in what he believes is their appropriate sphere.  This is way more dangerous than misogyny.

2.  I think the case of Ivanka is difficult.  She is supporting her father and has not broken with him.  That is, she doesn't believe he is as vile as most of us do.  She lives in a blinkered bubble so, one assumes, cannot see what the rest of us see.  Yes, she is an apologist for his sexism, but realistically, where is the political hay in going after her for supporting her dad?  She has actually achieved things, and I don't see anything but really negative backlash for any politician or news outlet running after her.  One could wish that the press would simply cease giving her airtime.  That is not going to happen though.  Trump is too good a story.

3.  I will disagree with one part of this.  I guess I'm a bit more third wave than some of y'all.  I find the negative reaction against "feminist light" empowerment itself kind of sexist.  It's like saying that girls shouldn't like pink because of its association with Barbie.  I don't see why a "feminist" needs to speak out for single mothers, or a women's right to contraceptives/planned parenthood, or violence against women (which honestly, I don't think there is a ton of controversy about on that list).  Sometimes just being in the room is controversial or groundbreaking, and sitting at the head of the table in that room even more so.    

[butterbumps!]

15 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

A couple of things:

 

1.  I think we should be careful of labeling Trump misogynist.  I think it is reductive and untrue.  He unbelievably sexist (for him the patriarchy is uuuuge), but I do not think he hates all women.  Rather the opposite.  I think he very much likes, appreciates, and perhaps even loves (if he is capable of the emotion) women, provided they stay in what he believes is their appropriate sphere.  This is way more dangerous than misogyny.

2.  I think the case of Ivanka is difficult.  She is supporting her father and has not broken with him.  That is, she doesn't believe he is as vile as most of us do.  She lives in a blinkered bubble so, one assumes, cannot see what the rest of us see.  Yes, she is an apologist for his sexism, but realistically, where is the political hay in going after her for supporting her dad?  She has actually achieved things, and I don't see anything but really negative backlash for any politician or news outlet running after her.  One could wish that the press would simply cease giving her airtime.  That is not going to happen though.  Trump is too good a story.

3.  I will disagree with one part of this.  I guess I'm a bit more third wave than some of y'all.  I find the negative reaction against "feminist light" empowerment itself kind of sexist.  It's like saying that girls shouldn't like pink because of its association with Barbie.  I don't see why a "feminist" needs to speak out for single mothers, or a women's right to contraceptives/planned parenthood, or violence against women (which honestly, I don't think there is a ton of controversy about on that list).  Sometimes just being in the room is controversial or groundbreaking, and sitting at the head of the table in that room even more so.    

1.  Is what you're describing necessarily not misogyny?   I appreciate the point you're making about the insidious character of Trump's feelings toward women and agree, but I do think it falls under the umbrella of "misogyny."

2.   The sexism denials/ apologies she makes are pretty odious, and damaging to women's rights, in my opinion, largely because they are coming from someone the industry helped portray as an activist for women.     She has gone on record making the same sad ignorant defenses of sexism that feminism has been trying to fight against for ages (such as how employing women means someone can't be sexist, for example).

I raised the issue of Ivanka not so much that the entire media should go against her on this.  Rather, I think the outlets that have been building her up as a role model for women's empowerment-- largely the major women's magazines like Marie Claire, Glamour, Cosmo-- ought to re-evaluate whether she is truly helpful to that cause in light of her sexism apology and denial.   Unlike more general news outlets, these publications have been aligning themselves increasingly with feminism and as advocates for women's rights (there are still some issues there, but for the most part, this is the way these mags have been branding themselves).  As such, they'd have an incentive to distance themselves from Ivanka, if not address her problematic comments directly.

[Maithanet]

4 hours ago, butterbumps! said:

1.  Is what you're describing necessarily not misogyny?   I appreciate the point you're making about the insidious character of Trump's feelings toward women and agree, but I do think it falls under the umbrella of "misogyny."

I have to agree here.  "I love women, but only when they conform to my very limited and sexist expectations of them" seems like a textbook definition of misogyny.

[Dr. Pepper]

"I'm not a misogynist.  Some of the people with my last name are women! And they're really hot and never on their periods, which is the only reason I love them, btw."