Yet Another Feminism Thread

[Eponine]

Really? You're pulling the personal experience card?

ETA: I mean I can tell a whole bunch of similar anecdotes about complimentary racism. So can a lot of people. I respect that you've had the experiences you've had but feel like you're implying that yours are somehow more valid than mine, making you a fitter judge of generalized character.

[karaddin]

Not silenced by force, no. And honestly, few instances still exist where the silencing is by force. Mostly, the silencing is done through informal social pressure, like say, female game developers being pressured into keeping quiet about the sexual harassment that they experience in their jobs. Still, I think it's naive to believe that merit trumps all in online discussions. It really doesn't. You can argue that it should, that it ought to, but it really doesn't. The only place where merit reigns supreme is in academic publications, imo. Anywhere else, the format and tone and the social factors of communication are important, too.

This post seems like a nice easy segue into this link which is some response from the game developer who was sexually harassed a couple of weeks ago by a games journalist, think the link on that was in the video games thread though. It is largely focused on how this silencing effect works in the games industry.

Naturally the comments immediately dive into victim blaming, she should have stopped him etc so don't read those unless you are looking for a hate read.

[Summah]

Eponine, I didn't mean to imply that my experiences are more valid than yours, maybe this is a difference of personality and culture or geography. I don't know you, I see you live in Denver, I live in Baltimore, I'm a very outspoken and outgoing person IRL, so I really prefer to fight my own battles. Colorado is pretty laid back, the East Coast is not. There are more differences, but I don't feel like getting into it. That said if a general casually racist comment is made (not specifically directed to me), I don't feel a need to always be the first one to answer, but if it's directed at me then yes I should be the first one to answer and I do not think that people who would deny me that are doing something that's ok. Someone with a different personality might like it when others answer first, but I think in the example of the comment directed at me, not allowing me the chance to answer first at best shows a lack of common courtesy and at worst well we've had pages on it and I think that's what you have issues with. Also and obviously WOC are not a monolithic group, so what people perceive me as (a black woman) and people perceive you as (I have no idea) changes their treatment of us and our experiences.

[karaddin]

Not sure whether this belongs more in the LGBTQI thread or this one, but as it's straddling feminist, trans and racial issues and recent conversation in here I thought it fits better here.

Janet Mock writing about doing sex work as a teenager.

I was 15 the first time I visited Merchant Street, what some would call “the stroll” for trans women involved in street-based sex work. At the time, I had just begun medically transitioning and it was where younger girls, like my friends and myself, would go to hang out, flirt and fool around with guys and socialize with older trans women, the legends of our community.
The majority of the women I idolized engaged in the sex trades at some time or another – some dabbled in video cam work and pornography, others chose street-based work and dancing at strip clubs (an option reserved for those most often perceived as cis). These women were the first trans women I met, and I quickly correlated trans womanhood and sex work.
I perceived the sex trades as a rite of passage, something a trans girl had to do in order to make the money necessary to support herself. I had also learned (from media, our laws and pop culture) that sex work is shameful and degrading.

[Luciferase_3H]

Modern feminism has devolved into identity politics and one self defined group screeching that they are more oppressed than the other. It's like an echo chamber. What's worse is that to move towards a utopia where people aren't defined by anything, the activists go to great lengths to box themselves into as many identities as they can. Intersectionality is great in theory, now it's just a way for an angry 18 year old to feel like they belong in a group. I don't want anything to do with it but my university is rampant with this bullshit.

4th wave feminism can screw itself. Egalitarianism is what everyone should be aiming for if "equality for all" is really what you're valuing here. I don't like treating half the world's population as a victim, and I'm a woman myself.

[emberling]

A society where nobody is defined by anything sounds more like a hellish dystopia to me.

Egalitarianism is great in theory. It's also good in practice, but only if you're an ostrich. Everyone looks the same when your head's in the sand.

In the real world, there are subtexts. There are unintended consequences. Pretending they aren't there, that good intentions are enough, is foolish. Treating them as unforgivable slights is foolish. But there is a middle ground to walk on.

Who is the expert on anyone's personal pain? No one but themselves. It's not your place or anyone's to define it, to limit it, to deny its existence. When some self-defined group, as you say, screeches that they are more oppressed than some other group - they're probably not wrong. Each group has the market cornered on whatever specific breed of oppression it attracts, and these are many-faceted, incomparable.

It comes down to this: we value informed opinion. In an egalitarian society, even, we value informed opinion over uninformed opinion. So if I write about how it feels when I pass people on the street, when I check out at a store or get some fast food or eat at a restaurant, and half of the people I encounter feel the need to punctuate with "sir"s instead of periods. Because yes, I know what I look like, but it's actually not necessary in polite society to go around throwing around your guess as to someone's gender as if it were some kind of delicious candy. It's entirely possible to get through most interactions without doing so at all.

Now that's going to sound silly to a lot of people. But those people largely don't have the experience of being misgendered nearly 24/7, of being fed for years a story of yourself told by other people that is verbally reinforced in every "thank you" and "good day" I have that experience; I am a primary source for my pain. Those people who do not - they can still speak. Their words are not inherently without value. But on this particular subject, yes, my words should speak louder. That is not unequal; words are not formed in a vacuum but come from people. They come from perspectives, contexts. To be blind to the context is to be blind to the message.

[brook]

I can think of nothing to add to that post except I very much agree.

[Seli]

The way "mansplaining" was explained to me was that it involved a man explaining feminist issues to a woman. Which has happened to me numerous times since I became a teacher. I've had a series of male bosses who lean toward the progressive side (as most people in education do in my extremely left-leaning area do.)

...

The way I've understood the origin of mansplaining] is that involves some lay person explaining something (often basic) to a woman in her field of (professional) expertise.

[Lyanna Stark]

Was feminism really a better place when middle class cis-gendered white women where almost the only feminists that were heard?

As someone who "found" feminism during the 90s which I suppose makes me third wave, I got really sad when one of my then feminist heroines recently commented how she does not recognise feminism and how back then, they spoke for everyone and didn't just argue among themselves. How can she, a professor and woman of education, intellect and yes, power, not realise that even if she never personally meant to marginalise someone, there are power structures in place which she is a part of.

[NestorMakhnosLovechild]

Was feminism really a better place when middle class cis-gendered white women where almost the only feminists that were heard?

As someone who "found" feminism during the 90s which I suppose makes me third wave, I got really sad when one of my then feminist heroines recently commented how she does not recognise feminism and how back then, they spoke for everyone and didn't just argue among themselves. How can she, a professor and woman of education, intellect and yes, power, not realise that even if she never personally meant to marginalise someone, there are power structures in place which she is a part of.

Isn't this really a false dichotomy though? Can't you both appreciate the multiplicity of new perspectives that have opened up in feminist thought because of all of the marginalized subgroups of women "finding their voice" while at the same time decrying the coarsening and divisiveness of a certain branch of feminist discourse? I think you can.

Jumping back to the OP and the article it links to, I think it's problematic when social prohibitions against "tone policing" mean that certain segments of the movement are given carte blanche to express their anger in unproductive and/or hurtful ways without challenge. Also from the discussion, I think it's obvious how obnoxious hashtags like #solidarityisforwhiteowmen reduce complex issues to divisive soundbytes (hey, maybe the problem is just the Twitterization of discourse). I mean, if you are a thoughtful, well-meaning white feminist, who tries to be hyper-aware of her own prejudices regarding race, you are basically being told by a certain subset of feminist women of color that you can't be on my side.

Every social movement is a tent, and is judged, in part, by how many differing views you can comfortably fit inside that tent. And it appears that there's a very vocal subsection of the feminist movement that's determined to draw the boundaries of that tent very tightly around themselves, with an intent to exclude.

[Prince Alexander]

Approximately 99% of contemporary feminists are attention seeking, lazy, uneducated,priviliged internet paratrolls. 1% are those with genuine desire for the betterment of society in meaningful ways. And I think those from the 1% are questioning that they should even continue to call themselves feminists. Doing good does not need a stamp, especially one as corrupt as that. Yes, I'm in that 1%.

[DanteGabriel]

Approximately 99% of contemporary feminists are attention seeking, lazy, uneducated,priviliged internet paratrolls. 1% are those with genuine desire for the betterment of society in meaningful ways. And I think those from the 1% are questioning that they should even continue to call themselves feminists. Doing good does not need a stamp, especially one as corrupt as that.

... This was mansplaining, right?

[Weeping Sore]

If you jump in on her in this situation, you're behaving disrespectfully and in a way participating in silencing a WOC, so unless you want to act like an asshole you have to just wait and speak right after her.

Sorry I'm behind the thread a bit here.

I was trying to get at a more general phenomenon here, not the alleged interruptive "white-knighting" in question.

I believe the phenomenon of borderline interruptive conversation/argument is somewhat gendered in itself. That is, men feel more entitled/compelled to do it, and women (NML's female colleagues excepted, presumably) feel more inhibitted from doing it, out of a more conditioned aversion to seeming rude.

Maybe my perception is skewed by growing up in a family of lawyers, that outside of that context it just seems like asshole behavior regardless of gender. Or maybe most people don't parse the distinction between lawyers and assholes. In NML's defense, while this type of argument may seem like a game with people scoring points against each other, ultimately the desire is to have the truth win out. And from this perspective the truth is much more important than anyone's feelings. Which I suppose makes this mode of discourse a particularly poor fit with identity politics. Or better said, sometimes the truth is people's feelings.

[Prince Alexander]

... This was mansplaining, right?

No, this was patriarchy, where men control feminism.

[Lyanna Stark]

Isn't this really a false dichotomy though? Can't you both appreciate the multiplicity of new perspectives that have opened up in feminist thought because of all of the marginalized subgroups of women "finding their voice" while at the same time decrying the coarsening and divisiveness of a certain branch of feminist discourse? I think you can.

I agree that you can. It was more her [zee olde feminist heroice] outrage when she said "But we spoke for everyone!" and seemed to seriously believe that she did. That's not to say that I think what she fought for and stood for, and is still standing for, is wrong. Not at all, but I found is discouraging that she could not accept that other viewpoints also had the right to exist, and that just because other feminist may not have the same main goals (hers was mainly equal salary and subsidised child care, which are great goals, obviously, but also something very middle class) she feels estranged from feminism and that she feels she can no longer call herself one. Focusing on other issues within feminism does not mean to me that it cannot co-exist with the fight for equal wages etc. One does not cancel out the other.

When it comes to coarsening and divisiveness, that certainly exists, and it's worrisome. On the other hand, I see it as partly a "sign of the times", since a lot of discourse has got coarser, or ruder, more in-your-face. This is a real issue, and goes hand in hand with what's often short handed "net hate": when people think they're totally anonymous, they spew all sorts of terrible shite they would rarely do to someone's face. It's a sad development and I have no idea how it can be stopped.

In addition to that, and on a more positive note, the fact that these debates within feminism are actually gaining enough attention to reach national newspapers (at least they are here) isn't a net negative to me. It means feminism is nowadays not something you feel excited about when you get a couple of hours to read a book in bed at night, but something that permeates society in a completely different way. Perhaps it's just my skewed perspective, but 20 years ago I hadn't even "met" with feminism, that happened two years later, I think and back then, only the very brave (or the academics few people cared about) called themselves feminists. There were no blogs, no online forums, no facebook or twitter where you could find like-minded people in a matter of minutes, or at worst hours. Whether we like it or not (and I certainly don't unreservedly like it) feminism has branched out, people who would not have run into feminism 20 years ago are now running into it.

That in itself will cause what my former idol called "fragmenting". She claimed feminism no longer had a "common purpose", but I think the reasons for why there are certainly lots of different issues clashing is because lots of new groups are taking part, bringing in their perspectives. On top of that you have a new system of channelling these discussions as they no longer go through the old forums of academia and established press.

Perhaps we're just going to have to get used to the fact that feminism is becoming such a huge and diverse movement that it's going to incorporate everything from Femen activists to sex workers to female CEOs demanding equal salaries to male CEOs. I don't know. Perhaps that will become a problem. One thing seems certain though: whatever the reactionaries think, it's here to stay.

... This was mansplaining, right?

It probably doesn't help that I read that as "manscaping" either. :stunned:

[karaddin]

Is manscaping a vital part of maintaining swagger, or does an alpha simply not care enough to bother manscaping?

[Larry of the Lawn]

Is manscaping a vital part of maintaining swagger, or does an alpha simply not care enough to bother manscaping?

It's vital. It's not just hygiene, it's one of the prominent hobbies of swaggering alphas.

[KiDisaster]

I don't know about "maintaining swagger", but manscaping is just plain considerate behavior.

Also, hello folks. I like to read these threads but generally feel too uninformed to make a meaningful contribution :lol:

[Galactus]

obviously, but also something very middle class)

I'm not sure it is, honestly. If anything I'd say these are some of the most class-neutral feminist projects, in that they directly impact the living standard of pretty much all women.

When it comes to coarsening and divisiveness, that certainly exists, and it's worrisome. On the other hand, I see it as partly a "sign of the times", since a lot of discourse has got coarser, or ruder, more in-your-face. This is a real issue, and goes hand in hand with what's often short handed "net hate": when people think they're totally anonymous, they spew all sorts of terrible shite they would rarely do to someone's face. It's a sad development and I have no idea how it can be stopped.

I think one of the problems is the combination of the "tone argument" and coarsening attitudes. I think there needs to be a realization that while tone shouldn't be overriding your argument, at certain points (like say, death threats) your tone becomes a separate infraction itself.

The trick is of course separating these two things. Just because ou express yourself in a stupid way doesen't make your argument invalid, but OTOH just because your argument is valid doesen't mean you can threaten others with death and/or bodily harm. EDIT: Without consequences.

[Summah]

The tone argument is frequently used to derail discussions away from the sexism/racism/ableism etc being discussed, usually by people who don't want to deal with their own internal sexism/racism/ableism etc.