Feminism - Post-apocalypse version

[Theda Baratheon]

1 hour ago, Balefont said:

Why bother delving any further into TERFs and misandry in this thread, though?  It's been clearly and thoroughly stated by many that these fringe-feminists are just that - fringe - and not widely accepted as the face of feminism.

I'm sensing the need to set up an easy punching bag to further derail a discussion with easily manufactured criticism.  Let's not.

Yeah - I'm sorry mankytoes but I don't see what good lingering on TERFS would do. I don't think they'd add anything of value to the discussion. 

[mankytoes]

2 hours ago, Balefont said:

Why bother delving any further into TERFs and misandry in this thread, though?  It's been clearly and thoroughly stated by many that these fringe-feminists are just that - fringe - and not widely accepted as the face of feminism.

I'm sensing the need to set up an easy punching bag to further derail a discussion with easily manufactured criticism.  Let's not.

People have told me to try and educate myself more, and to me, that involves speaking to people with different viewpoints. But if the TERFs aren't on here, then there's no one to discuss this with.

They may be on the fringe, but in England at least, that isn't really the impression an outsider gets. As I've said, you've got the single most famous feminist, I would say the most famous living author of a feminist book, as anti trans, as well as a very famous author. I've never had the opportunity to question these people.

I think it's important, especially if you're interested in answering the question of why most people say they are in favour of gender equality, but not feminism. But as I say, if they aren't on here, there's nowhere really for the debate to go.

[TerraPrime]

Acceptance of femininity in men is a really difficult topic to unpack. I don't know if anything can be done that will make any headway if it's not coming from cis heterosexual men. They are the ones who need to change because they are the ones most impacted. Any and all changes need to be embraced by them. I don't deliberately go look for them, but I also haven't come across any sort of credible group of male writers on femininity in men, either. I am rather dourly pessimistic at the whole prospect of finally reaching parity in valuing both masculinity and femininity. This is not to say that I don't think it's worthwhile - it absolutely is. But I am just highly pessimistic on this issue. 

[Wrl6199]

Just now, TerraPrime said:

Acceptance of femininity in men is a really difficult topic to unpack. I don't know if anything can be done that will make any headway if it's not coming from cis heterosexual men. They are the ones who need to change because they are the ones most impacted. Any and all changes need to be embraced by them. I don't deliberately go look for them, but I also haven't come across any sort of credible group of male writers on femininity in men, either. I am rather dourly pessimistic at the whole prospect of finally reaching parity in valuing both masculinity and femininity. This is not to say that I don't think it's worthwhile - it absolutely is. But I am just highly pessimistic on this issue. 

Do you mean accepting that people have feminine features? cause if so i feel like tats true that most people dint wont to have a feminine side. Not sure why you would. But yeah inst cisgender pretty much all people. I hadn't heard of that term at this point. I mean i guess i had but not in a while. Did you say that men need to embrace the changes? Cause it says that you are a man. Im not sure if you are talking in the third person. Yeah i agree i haven't seen many writers writing about femininity in men either. To be honest though i haven't looked for it. Its not too common.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

40 minutes ago, TerraPrime said:

Acceptance of femininity in men is a really difficult topic to unpack. I don't know if anything can be done that will make any headway if it's not coming from cis heterosexual men. They are the ones who need to change because they are the ones most impacted. Any and all changes need to be embraced by them. I don't deliberately go look for them, but I also haven't come across any sort of credible group of male writers on femininity in men, either. I am rather dourly pessimistic at the whole prospect of finally reaching parity in valuing both masculinity and femininity. This is not to say that I don't think it's worthwhile - it absolutely is. But I am just highly pessimistic on this issue. 

There's a bit of a chicken and egg paradox here - cis men will embrace femininity when they feel that it is non threatening to them which will not happen until that which is female is valued equivalently which will not happen until...

[Lily Valley]

19 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

Yep. more and more feminists, "the left", liberals and social justice warriors are just dirty words. especially feminists - there are women I know who would NEVER call themselves feminists and yet they're interested in all of these issues relating to feminism. it's just not safe to admit to being a feminist half the time EVEN MY GOD DAMN PHONE LITERALLY JUST AUTO CORRECTED 'FEMINIST' TO 'DEMON' WHAT THE HECK 

Theda I just cracked up.  DEMONS!!!!!

Terra, Kara and Lyanna,

Thanks for the recs.  I pulled Whistling Vivaldi and went ahead and sprung for a better format on Sexing the Body.  The pdf was too tiny on my Kindle.  Sexing the Body is DENSE and I'm having a hard time just reading and not stopping to look up every single reference.  Kindle version totally worth it so I can take notes.  THANK YOU.

Terra, I'll look into other organizations here on campus.  There has to be more than one.  The women's organization here (to clarify) is entirely made up of representatives dressed in battle armor consisting of impeccable hair and make-up and trimmed out suits.  To be honest, I find them really intimidating.  I think I should probably just grow up and get over it.  Mulling it over yesterday, I realized it was my own insecurities talking.  The result of decades of feeling judged by well turned out women.  I've always worked in a lab environment and dressed accordingly.  Put me next to a woman who dresses well for office work or public speaking and I immediately feel like an awkward child all over again.  That's on me, not them. 

As to having conversations with my students, they are bringing this stuff up now.  All I do is answer their questions honestly and try to steer the conversation away from politics in general to work related topics.  They actually talk to each other about their own personal experiences.  Even the awkward boys have opened up about feeling pushed aside by their alpha contemporaries.  When they start talking like this, I STFU and let them go.    I DO talk to them often about checking out a company's power structure when looking for a job after college.  If the organization has zero women and zero minorities in their top structure, it's a red flag.  It's especially noteworthy in the New Orleans area because the general population is very diverse.  A company would have to work pretty hard to keep an all white male management.  

  My college is pretty small, so all of the engineering majors have the same physics and calculus classes together.  The number of girls in Calc based physics is depressing.  Sometimes it's ONE in a class of 20-25 and attrition is high.  My special topics course heavily recruits women from a range of science backgrounds and I usually manage to get two -four in a class of 8-16.    The first day of class I tell all of them that our program is NOT affirmative action.  It is specifically designed to recruit under-represented groups in STEM because it is an under-tapped talent pool.  The country NEEDS more scientists and engineers, we're maxed out on the number we can get from populations that are generally encouraged to those fields.  The grant we use is in place to give institutions a kick in the ass to get more bodies into the STEM fields.  We are still decades away from achieving a critical mass that's needed to change the culture, but I am already seeing enormous change in the way the students respond to one another compared to my own experience 15-20 years ago.  They are a lot more collaborative and much better at trusting each other to complete individual subsets of tasks so that the work gets done.  In my day it was everyone for themselves until I got to grad school.   This is the good news, things are changing.

As to breaking up the girls, I'm implementing a new lab policy this spring based on a program started in Baltimore called Community labs.  I don't want to derail this thread into a STEM education chat, so I'll just point out the bit that is relative.  The lab structure forces the students into groups of four and each is given an assigned role for the two-week lab.  The lab culminates on the second week with a science discussion.  I am hoping this will prevent the girls from getting dumped into the "note-taker" role every week.  I hate seeing this, particularly because some of the girls totally suck at writing.  They're SCIENCE and MATH majors, not technical writers.  Also if you're just watching a classmate perform an experiment, you're likely to not understand what's happening well enough to write it up.   The students will only given individual grades for their participation in the science discussion and on two lab practicals.  Otherwise they are graded as a group and part of that grade is based on delegating and completing each task.  I personally feel that anything that forces the students to actually work together and build trust that each task will get done will help make the lab more useful to all of them and keep all of them engaged.  Obviously I've got my eye on the girls especially, but I think it will help any of the students who are less sure that they deserve a seat at the table.  They're probably going to hate it.  I'm fine with that.  I think it's going to be great.

[TerraPrime]

33 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

There's a bit of a chicken and egg paradox here - cis men will embrace femininity when they feel that it is non threatening to them which will not happen until that which is female is valued equivalently which will not happen until...

There's a lot of truth to that. 

 

Here's an example that pops into my head: kilts. It's still very nerdy and off-the-mainstream but there are guys who are kilt advocates now. So, that's one area of dress code that's being worked on. Is it a good thing? Because this is explicitly about being okay with wearing a "skirt" because it's NOT A SKIRT. Even though it totally is one. But we brand it as masculine (culture and tradition help), and so it's more okay for a man to wear a kilt than it is for him to wear a skirt. 

Also, thinking historically, women wearing pants was indeed a socially scandalous thing for quite a while. To this day we have conservative religious groups that forbid women wearing pants. So maybe, in that context, the situation isn't as dire? 

 

Just spitballing here. 

[Ice Queen]

8 minutes ago, TerraPrime said:

There's a lot of truth to that. 

 

Here's an example that pops into my head: kilts. It's still very nerdy and off-the-mainstream but there are guys who are kilt advocates now. So, that's one area of dress code that's being worked on. Is it a good thing? Because this is explicitly about being okay with wearing a "skirt" because it's NOT A SKIRT. Even though it totally is one. But we brand it as masculine (culture and tradition help), and so it's more okay for a man to wear a kilt than it is for him to wear a skirt. 

Also, thinking historically, women wearing pants was indeed a socially scandalous thing for quite a while. To this day we have conservative religious groups that forbid women wearing pants. So maybe, in that context, the situation isn't as dire? 

 

Just spitballing here. 

It's not just religious groups. Some employers won't allow female employers to wear anything but skirts and dresses. Until about 5 years ago, we had to wear skirts/dresses, pantyhose and heels (no open toes). Every single day. No pants, capris, nothing sleeveless, no spaghetti straps, and skirts had to be finger length. 

One company I worked for fired a female VP for wearing a short skirt to a meeting. 

[Lyanna Stark]

2 hours ago, mankytoes said:

They may be on the fringe, but in England at least, that isn't really the impression an outsider gets. As I've said, you've got the single most famous feminist, I would say the most famous living author of a feminist book, as anti trans, as well as a very famous author. I've never had the opportunity to question these people.

I don't get this at all. I lived in the UK for five years, I still follow UK major news outlets, and my impression isn't at all that Greer is the single most famous feminist. That would most likely be Steinem, Wolfe, bell hooks or Butler, with Faludi, Ngozi Adichie, Serano, Roxane Gay and Sarkeesian added to that list as well as "currently more influential feminists than Greer". At the very least.

I mean the only thing you hear about Greer is that she insulted someone. She doesn't actually contribute to feminist discussion a lot. And when she participates, it's mostly a mess since she makes little sense.

@Lily Valley Yay, I am so glad you got a good copy of Sexing the Body, and YES it is dense, and I must admit to skipping some of the rat diagrams (this will make sense later, I promise ) but yes, it was...an extremely useful read.

[Theda Baratheon]

22 minutes ago, Lyanna Stark said:

I don't get this at all. I lived in the UK for five years, I still follow UK major news outlets, and my impression isn't at all that Greer is the single most famous feminist. That would most likely be Steinem, Wolfe, bell hooks or Butler, with Faludi, Ngozi Adichie, Serano, Roxane Gay and Sarkeesian added to that list as well as "currently more influential feminists than Greer". At the very least.

I mean the only thing you hear about Greer is that she insulted someone. She doesn't actually contribute to feminist discussion a lot. And when she participates, it's mostly a mess since she makes little sense.

@Lily Valley Yay, I am so glad you got a good copy of Sexing the Body, and YES it is dense, and I must admit to skipping some of the rat diagrams (this will make sense later, I promise ) but yes, it was...an extremely useful read.

I've seen her a couple times on TV on politics shows but she didn't really make sense and was just kinda unlikeable. definitely not most famous feminist. 

And I also just don't see the value in the opinions of everyone. that might sound like...terrible? but I don't care about TERFs opinions, i dont need them to form my own and to disagree with them. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

1 hour ago, TerraPrime said:

There's a lot of truth to that. 

 

Here's an example that pops into my head: kilts. It's still very nerdy and off-the-mainstream but there are guys who are kilt advocates now. So, that's one area of dress code that's being worked on. Is it a good thing? Because this is explicitly about being okay with wearing a "skirt" because it's NOT A SKIRT. Even though it totally is one. But we brand it as masculine (culture and tradition help), and so it's more okay for a man to wear a kilt than it is for him to wear a skirt. 

Also, thinking historically, women wearing pants was indeed a socially scandalous thing for quite a while. To this day we have conservative religious groups that forbid women wearing pants. So maybe, in that context, the situation isn't as dire? 

 

Just spitballing here. 

Hah - this is a perfect example.  And why a man dressing in an evening gown is "drag" has an automatic "camp" element, but a woman wearing a tux is "edgy" in Us Weekly.

[brook]

So just thought I'd back up to @Lyanna Stark's point about women's bodies being as innately flawed next to male bodies because it gives me a chance for a couple of rants that has been building for most of my time away from the board.

After finally getting an adhd diagnosis (thanks to @karaddin's persistence and the realisation that a ven diagram of 'my son's adhd traits' and 'ways the boy is like me' is very nearly a circle) I start on medication and it is absolutely life changing. Suddenly I feel like maybe I can aspire to be just 'disorganised and scatterbrained' and not 'Brook what the hell is wrong with you?', maybe I'll even finally manage to complete a uni degree...

So all is wonderful except that as the year progresses I start to notice that the week before my period the meds just don't work as well, if at all. Now this is something I can work around if I know it's a thing but I do like to understand things and for all I know it's relevant to other period-related issues I'm having or maybe a different medication wouldn't have that problem, so I have a dig around and find.... absolutely nothing.

Except that's not entirely true. I find adhd forums FULL of women saying things that mirror exactly what I'm experiencing, that their symptoms get worse and their meds are less effective just before or during their period and half their doctors are telling them they are imagining it (because nobody gaslights women like the medical community does) and the other half are just kind of shrugging.

What I don't find are medical studies on the effects of hormonal fluctuations on these meds, because they are tested on men not women. One of the reasons for that? Because men don't have fluctuating hormones and so provide a better way to evaluate the effects. Which makes a certain kind of sense.... if you're willing to accept a definition of 'human body' as 'one which doesn't have inconveniently fluctuating hormones' but not really if you care about the fact that a large portion of the adult population does.

Anyway at the same time as all of this is going on I'm trying to get to the bottom of those 'other period related issues' which have started to become a really major problem for me. Doctor sends me off for an ultrasound to start with ultrasound tech tells me she can see what looks like an ectopic pregnancy. My response is 'I'm not sure what you are seeing but it's absolutely not that' after questioning about how I could possibly be so sure and a response detailing just how long it's been since I'd had any sort of sexual contact with anyone who had a penis she went off to consult with her supervisor, finished the ultrasound, and I collect the report to my GP ... which instructs him he should give me a pregnancy test and offers NO other explanation of what this non-existent ectopic pregnancy could be.So that was the beginning of an absolutely futile attempt to extract any sort of explanation from multiple specialists as to what exactly was going on with me and specifically 

* Why my periods have gone from 'heavy and about a week to ten days long to 'oh look I'm now anaemic and am bleeding more days than I'm not-bleeding'

* Why I have regular and intense menstrual migraines all of a sudden

* Why instead of a few days of feeling irritiable I am now at the point where PMS week = 'I actually doubt my own sanity and am starting to feel suicidal but ONLY during that time, it evaporates on day 2-3 of my period'

among with a bunch of other physical stuff like my blood pressure being all over the place and just random 'this isn't right' symptoms

I never did get even a possible explanation. I got a LOT of attempts to put me on various forms of birth control despite me saying consistently that I have a really bad history with hormonal birth control and I absolutely do not want and will not accept a Mirena (the last doctor I said that to told me to think about it in the time before I came back for my next test and then apparently wrote it on the form so that as I'm getting wheeled in about to go under a general I'm having to correct 'what no that's not what you're doing' 

As always, it took a lot of my own research and talking to other women to actually get any sort of explanation of WHAT might be going on and it looks almost certain to be early stage perimenopause. Which there isn't much they can do to 'treat' but nobody even mentioned it to me as a possibility because the attitude of absolutely everyone I consulted was very much 'here do/take this thing which will mask your symptoms enough that you will go away and stop complaining' 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

3 minutes ago, brook said:

 

 

* Why instead of a few days of feeling irritiable I am now at the point where PMS week = 'I actually doubt my own sanity and am starting to feel suicidal but ONLY during that time, it evaporates on day 2-3 of my period'

 

Totally separate from your very good point about medical reserach and women (and part of the reason why women's symptoms for heart attacks weren't recognized for years, but I digress), I read a fascinating article somewhere recently that I will try to find that examines the idea that non-cramp PMS itself is a cultural construction (that doesn't mean it isn't real but that it is constructed and not an innate part of our chemistry and bodies).  The article tied back to the almost unhealthy fascination that medical researchers (meaning, historically, men) have had with the uterus, leading to wonderful words like hysteria.....we are unhealthy and illogical because of our wombs, so goes the theory and then it self-fulfills.  

[karaddin]

I've got an awful lot of side eye for someone who previously said they had no interest in reading a heavily recommended book by a trans woman who is now calling for/bemoaning the lack of TERF perspective in this thread. Other peoples identities are not a valid subject for intellectual debate.

I think the explanation for Greer still being on tv is very simple and @brook has already said it - she finds outrageous and offensive things to say and that's the tv equivalent of click bait. Journalism is failing is in all spheres, this is just another of them. She's very good at using the outrage over harmful or offensive stuff she's said to depict herself as speaking truth to power, but she's speaking on behalf of power not against it.

[Lily Valley]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Totally separate from your very good point about medical reserach and women (and part of the reason why women's symptoms for heart attacks weren't recognized for years, but I digress), I read a fascinating article somewhere recently that I will try to find that examines the idea that non-cramp PMS itself is a cultural construction (that doesn't mean it isn't real but that it is constructed and not an innate part of our chemistry and bodies).  The article tied back to the almost unhealthy fascination that medical researchers (meaning, historically, men) have had with the uterus, leading to wonderful words like hysteria.....we are unhealthy and illogical because of our wombs, so goes the theory and then it self-fulfills.  

Here's the article.  I found it to be a bunch of "argle-bargle".  I come from a tradition of hard science where if you have TWO variables, you need TWO gaussian curves.  That means 12 samples for EVERY variable.  My main issue with medical crossover to social science is that you wind up with "flying spaghetti monster" arguments and you can use scientific methodology to prove a lot of things.  Especially when there are variables that you have no control over and also you haven't even tested for.

This article makes some suggestions, but doesn't offer ANY medical observations.

[brook]

Yeah I've read a lot of arguments along those lines while in the 'ok what the hell is going on with me' research period and I'm just not convinced. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there isn't a socially constructed element to how things are expressed but I don't believe that there is not also a chemical aspect. 

I'm also really, really wary of anything which attempts to find a psychological cause for women's health issues because 'it's all in your head' has historically been as common a response from the medical establishment as 'it's all because of your womb'

I'd also say that if hormones make women crazy/illogical is a trope that gets thrown around too much (and regardless of any medical aspect it does) nobody actually questions that hormones can make men illogical or emotional - we just don't *call* it that. We talk about the connection of testosterone to violence, we coin terms like 'roid rage' but we don't ever call it 'emotional' or 'irrational' because we still at some level refuse to attach those labels to anything coded male. 

[mankytoes]

3 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

I don't get this at all. I lived in the UK for five years, I still follow UK major news outlets, and my impression isn't at all that Greer is the single most famous feminist. That would most likely be Steinem, Wolfe, bell hooks or Butler, with Faludi, Ngozi Adichie, Serano, Roxane Gay and Sarkeesian added to that list as well as "currently more influential feminists than Greer". At the very least.

I mean the only thing you hear about Greer is that she insulted someone. She doesn't actually contribute to feminist discussion a lot. And when she participates, it's mostly a mess since she makes little sense.

@Lily Valley Yay, I am so glad you got a good copy of Sexing the Body, and YES it is dense, and I must admit to skipping some of the rat diagrams (this will make sense later, I promise ) but yes, it was...an extremely useful read.

So to give you an example of the sort of thing I am talking about, did you ever watch Question Time? I've seen Greer on that a few times, that's a proper mainstream political show. I haven't seen anyone else you've mentioned on there more than once. She has the ear.

She insults a lot of people, that's kind of her thing. She's always been like that, and it has always divided people.

[Lily Valley]

20 minutes ago, brook said:

Yeah I've read a lot of arguments along those lines while in the 'ok what the hell is going on with me' research period and I'm just not convinced. I wouldn't be at all surprised if there isn't a socially constructed element to how things are expressed but I don't believe that there is not also a chemical aspect. 

I'm also really, really wary of anything which attempts to find a psychological cause for women's health issues because 'it's all in your head' has historically been as common a response from the medical establishment as 'it's all because of your womb'

I'd also say that if hormones make women crazy/illogical is a trope that gets thrown around too much (and regardless of any medical aspect it does) nobody actually questions that hormones can make men illogical or emotional - we just don't *call* it that. We talk about the connection of testosterone to violence, we coin terms like 'roid rage' but we don't ever call it 'emotional' or 'irrational' because we still at some level refuse to attach those labels to anything coded male. 

There's actually some good research on young men and their testosterone surges / agressive behavior.  They're done by assessing young men in crowded environments vs. less crowded environments (where the population per sf is greater than something) and found that adolescent and young men experience more (twice as many) testosterone surges every day.  I'll pull them.  What stuck me about these studies, is that there is ZERO equivalent about studying hormone levels in women.  ZERO.  Also, sadly, there is no follow up.  OK, this is a thing, how does it effect quality of life?  Nothing.  How does it affect adulthood?  Nothing.

As far as BIOLOGICAL study, it seems like this kind of hormonal study should be at the forefront, right?  Especially of those flagship doctors or biology hormones.

[brook]

It doesn't matter if we're talking hard sciences or humanities it never ceases to amaze me how much just isn't studied, or examined at all.

 

[Lily Valley]

4 minutes ago, brook said:

It doesn't matter if we're talking hard sciences or humanities it never ceases to amaze me how much just isn't studied, or examined at all.

 

^^^ This.  My mother just sent me an article about "ground breaking" work in the cancer field where  a statistician stepped in and refined the process of giving cancer drugs to specific patients.  I was HORRIFIED that this work hadn't been done.  The algorithms of success are in place.  And this is Cancer.  It's "never mind women's little problems".

I just can't.