Yet Another Feminism Thread

[Shryke]

Semi-slightly inspired by earlier comments in this thread, I thought this article I saw today was kinda interesting:

http://www.thenation.com/article/178140/feminisms-toxic-twitter-wars?page=0,0

It's on the tone and content of online feminist discussion:

Just a few years ago, the feminist blogosphere seemed an insouciant, freewheeling place, revivifying women’s liberation for a new generation.

Yet even as online feminism has proved itself a real force for change, many of the most avid digital feminists will tell you that it’s become toxic. Indeed, there’s a nascent genre of essays by people who feel emotionally savaged by their involvement in it—not because of sexist trolls, but because of the slashing righteousness of other feminists. On January 3, for example, Katherine Cross, a Puerto Rican trans woman working on a PhD at the CUNY Graduate Center, wrote about how often she hesitates to publish articles or blog posts out of fear of inadvertently stepping on an ideological land mine and bringing down the wrath of the online enforcers. “I fear being cast suddenly as one of the ‘bad guys’ for being insufficiently radical, too nuanced or too forgiving, or for simply writing something whose offensive dimensions would be unknown to me at the time of publication,” she wrote.

Further, as Cross says, “this goes to the heart of the efficacy of radical movements.” After all, this is hardly the first time that feminism—to say nothing of other left-wing movements—has been racked by furious contentions over ideological purity. Many second-wave feminist groups tore themselves apart by denouncing and ostracizing members who demonstrated too much ambition or presumed to act as leaders. As the radical second-waver Ti-Grace Atkinson famously put it: “Sisterhood is powerful. It kills. Mostly sisters.”

In “Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood,” a 1976 Ms. magazine article, Jo Freeman described how feminists of her generation destroyed one another. Trashing, she wrote, is “accomplished by making you feel that your very existence is inimical to the Movement and that nothing can change this short of ceasing to exist."

For feminists today, knowing that others have been through similar things is not necessarily comforting. “Some of it is the product of new technologies that create more shallow relationships, and some of it feels like this age-old conundrum within feminism,” Martin says. “How do we disentangle what part is about social media and what part is about the way women interact with one another? If there’s something inherent about the way women work within movements that makes us assholes to each other, that is incredibly sad.”

(I thought this part was interesting but I don't know if it's so much a women thing since left-wing movements in general seem rife with this shit)

There’s a shorthand way of talking about online feminist arguments that pits middle-class white women against all the groups they oppress. Clearly, there’s some truth here: privileged white people dominate feminism, just as they do most other sectors of American life. Brittney Cooper, an assistant professor at Rutgers and co-founder of the Crunk Feminist Collective blog, is one of the black women who participated in #Femfuture, and she has spoken out against the viciousness that dominates Twitter. But she also emphasizes that the resentment expressed online is rooted in something real.

That doesn’t mean, though, that social media’s climate of perpetual outrage and hair-trigger offense is constructive. “There is a problem with toxicity on Twitter and in social media,” Cooper says. “I think we have to say that. I’m not sure that black women are benefiting from the toxicity.”

Being targeted by other activists, she says, “leaves you feeling threatened in the sense that you’re getting turned out of your own home…. The one place that you are able to look to for safety, where you were valued, where there is a lot less of the structural prejudice that makes you feel so outcast in the rest of the world—that’s now been closed to you. That you now have this terrible reputation… I know a lot of friends that live in fear of that.”

This part here I think is probably the heart of the article:

Online, however, intersectionality is overwhelmingly about chastisement and rooting out individual sin. Partly, says Cooper, this comes from academic feminism, steeped as it is in a postmodern culture of critique that emphasizes the power relations embedded in language. “We actually have come to believe that how we talk about things is the best indicator of our politics,” she notes. An elaborate series of norms and rules has evolved out of that belief, generally unknown to the uninitiated, who are nevertheless hammered if they unwittingly violate them. Often, these rules began as useful insights into the way rhetorical power works but, says Cross, “have metamorphosed into something much more rigid and inflexible.” One such rule is a prohibition on what’s called “tone policing.” An insight into the way marginalized people are punished for their anger has turned into an imperative “that you can never question the efficacy of anger, especially when voiced by a person from a marginalized background.”

But the expectation that feminists should always be ready to berate themselves for even the most minor transgressions—like being too friendly at a party—creates an environment of perpetual psychodrama, particularly when coupled with the refusal to ever question the expression of an oppressed person’s anger.

“What’s disgusting and disturbing to me is that I see some of the more intellectually dishonest arguments put forth by women of color being legitimized and performed by white feminists, who seem to be in some sort of competition to exhibit how intersectional they are,” says Jezebel founder Holmes, who is black. “There are these Olympian attempts on the part of white feminists to underscore and display their ally-ship in a way that feels gross and dishonest and, yes, patronizing.”

Mikki Kendall is unmoved by complaints about the repressive climate online. An Army veteran, graduate student and married mother of two in Chicago, Kendall is both famous and feared in Internet feminist circles. Mother Jones declared her one of the “13 Badass Women of 2013”—along with Wendy Davis and Malala Yousafzai—for her creation of the #solidarityisforwhitewomen hashtag. But as Kendall well knows, many consider her a bully, though few want to say so out loud. “I kind of have a reputation for being mean,” she says.

On the phone, Kendall isn’t mean. She seems warm and engaging, but also obsessed—she talks at length about slights made in the comment threads of blogs more than five years ago. As she sees it, feminist elites have been snubbing women with less power for years, and now that their power is being challenged, they’re crying foul. Their complaints, she argues, are yet another assertion of privilege, since they’re unmindful of how much more flak Kendall and her friends take.

The problem, as she sees it, lies in mainstream white feminists’ expectations of how they deserve to be treated. “Feminism has a mammy problem, and mammy doesn’t live here anymore,” Kendall says. “I know The Help told you you was smart, you was important, you was special. The Help lied. You’re going to have to deal with anger, you’re going to have to deal with hurt.” And if it all gets to be too much? “Self-care comes into this. Sometimes you have to close the Internet.”

Few people are doing that, but they are disengaging from online feminism. Holmes, who left Jezebel in 2010 and is now a columnist for The New York Times Book Review, says she would never start a women’s website today. “Hell, no,” she says. The women’s blogosphere “feels like a much more insular, protective, brittle environment than it did before. It’s really depressing,” she adds. “It makes me think I got out at the right time.”

I thought it was a really interesting read, although I've tried to reproduce the basic points here for the TLDR crowd.

[brook]

That would be the article that started the thread I believe.

[Theda Baratheon]

Tumblr feminism is convoluted and toxic as fuck, every time I question whether or not I should be continuing to call myself a feminist I read the feminism threads on these boards and the posts by awesome, intelligent people who aren't bickering shut-ins.

I know that sounds judgmental, but there doesn't seem to be one unified movement on sites such as tumblr now and I'm seeing a disturbing emergence of young ''feminists'' either playing the whole ''lol gonna put on my red lipstick and steal your boyfriend because im fierce'' or ''women can do no wrong men are terrible'' and both of these are very problematic even though one is women being pitted against each other over men, which is entirely unfeminist and the other is invalidating the fact that women have to take full responsibiity to their actions the same as men, some people are cruel, some people are kind, some people are intelligent, men and women and this idea that women should be sheltered away from evil menz pisses me off.

I try to stay away from feminism more and more online and that's really starting to bother me as it has been an important part of my identity for quite awhile.

The more I read about radical feminism in particular, the more I get grossed out

[Theda Baratheon]

mostly I'm becoming more and more bothered with the way women interact with each other, it's either be totally fierce and if you're not some sassy ~strong woman~ then you're somehow doing it wrong, or it's this equally as bad sheltering and ''oh yes oh yes all men are bad women can do no wrong''

Please do not misunderstand me, I think a safe place and sisterhood are nice ideas but not in the sense where it's completely stripping women of any character. I'm probably not making any sense, and I need to go to sleep now, but tumblr is just....off-putting.

[karaddin]

There are good parts of radical feminism as well, the good parts just seem less vocal and visible while the exclusionary types seem to scream from the rooftops. Lyanna for example is a radical feminist, although more from the Swedish tradition than English speaking, and by some of the definitions of it I'd probably fall close to that category if not in it (I'm forgetting exactly what the definition she's provided is :p).

But the majority of what you see identifying as radical feminism online in English is indeed awfully gross.

[Lyanna Stark]

Well, people call themselves radical feminists, but what does "radical" mean to them? It's a label that used to mean you thought feminism needed to enter the personal sphere, that equality in the eyes if the law was not enough, the personal is political etc.

In other words pretty far away from what people often use it as shorthand for, or indeed how people often describe themselves.

I've never read feminist stuff on tumblr. I stay with jezebel, feminism 101 and some Swedish stuff plus books (when I get the time to).

[Gneisenau]

Did they account for the fact that the internet is more trolly and toxic in general ?

[Shryke]

Did they account for the fact that the internet is more trolly and toxic in general ?

In the article?

One of the quotes I tihnk is dead on: It doesn't matter.

If feminism is being largely distributed via the internet these days then whether or not it's normal for the internet isn't gonna change it's general character.

[Prosesskrift]

I wonder if the heart of the issue is simply that it's much easier to attack percieved slights than it is to participate in constructive discussions. It requires less work, and produces much of the same sense of accomplishment in most people I think.

[Galactus]

I remeber listening to a lecture series on american religious history, and remember one of the things mentioned as being peculiar (although far from unique) to american protestantism is the "public confession of sins before the congregation".

Most christian movemens do have some form of confession of sins, but it's usually either in private to a priest, or collectively. (IE: the entire congrgation confesses their sins in rather unspecific tems) there isn't the entire "stand up before the congregation and describe what you've done bad." thing.

And one thing he pointed out it that this.... Requirement, has kind of floated into radical political movements as well. Apologies are supposed to be public, and there's a big backlash if they're done "wrong" etc. I found it fairly interesting.

[Edda van Heefmstra Ruston]

I wonder if the heart of the issue is simply that it's much easier to attack percieved slights than it is to participate in constructive discussions. It requires less work, and produces much of the same sense of accomplishment in most people I think.

There may be an element of that, but I think it would be far too easy to simply dismiss everything as stemming from this. It's practically impossible to have constructive discussions when you're feeling ignored, or oppressed, or used, and the other party denies that you have any point at all. Given that supposed solidarity is also used to silence objections, I think it's unsurprising (and usually reasonable) for people to object to that.

[Weeping Sore]

Not sure if you're suggesting an agnostic declaration of the possible existence of unicorns, or if you missed the point entirely... let's try again. Institutional sexism is institutional. You cannot be a person in this world and escape it. There is not a divide between "sexists" and "non-sexists" - there are only people, all of whom (other than the unicorns) have been bombarded from birth with sexist ideas, sexist depictions, sexist expectations. Some people more than others, but nobody gets out unscathed.

Maybe a man who grew up in a matrillineal/matriarchal pre-modern society like the Wodaabe people of the Sahel would not think of women as inferior.

[Robin Of House Hill]

Maybe a man who grew up in a matrillineal/matriarchal pre-modern society like the Wodaabe people of the Sahel would not think of women as inferior.

That was certainly the case in the Minoan civilization.

But, that raises an interesting question. Can anyone think of a civilization where there was equality between the sexes?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Lyanna,

Well, people call themselves radical feminists, but what does "radical" mean to them? It's a label that used to mean you thought feminism needed to enter the personal sphere, that equality in the eyes if the law was not enough, the personal is political etc.

In other words pretty far away from what people often use it as shorthand for, or indeed how people often describe themselves.

I've never read feminist stuff on tumblr. I stay with jezebel, feminism 101 and some Swedish stuff plus books (when I get the time to).

I always thought "radical feminism" is defined by whether the feminist in question wants to force men to pee sitting down.

:P

[Lyanna Stark]

Lyanna,

I always thought "radical feminism" is defined by whether the feminist in question wants to force men to pee sitting down.

:P

Water closets - the radical frontier? :p

[Robin Of House Hill]

Lyanna,

I always thought "radical feminism" is defined by whether the feminist in question wants to force men to pee sitting down.

:P

Ser Scot,

Now, that I've stopped laughing, I can see how an assault on the ultimate male privilege would be seen as radical. :)

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

What blows me away is that there is apparently a Swedish political party that really makes this an issue:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10555436/Im-taking-a-stand-against-peeing-sitting-down.html

From the article (it is the Telegraph, I know.)

Feminist groups in France and Holland have been campaigning on the issue under slogans like “laissez tomber votre pantalon, et asseyez vous!” (lower your trousers and sit!), and “toch niet weer een vieze plas op MIJN badkamer vloer!” (not another filthy puddle on MY bathroom floor!).

The Germans are even more militant on the issue. In 2004, a company called Patentwert produced the WC Ghost, intended to shame men into sitting to deliver.

Costing £6, the gadget was attached to a lavatory seat. When it was raised, an automatic voice was triggered.

“Hey, stand-peeing is not allowed here and will be punished with fines, so if you don’t want any trouble, you’d best sit down”, it barked, in a voice modelled on Gerhard Schroder. Many millions of these devices have been sold in Germany.

[Maithanet]

What blows me away is that there is apparently a Swedish political party that really makes this an issue:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/10555436/Im-taking-a-stand-against-peeing-sitting-down.html

From the article (it is the Telegraph, I know.)

I likewise find it pretty baffling that anyone would want to engage in a political fight to get men to pee sitting down. And if the devise is real, I suspect it would just encourage a lot of men to piss with the seat down. I know I would.

[Castel]

I likewise find it pretty baffling that anyone would want to engage in a political fight to get men to pee sitting down.

I suppose it's encouraging that they can even have this fight :dunno: ?

Meh, I can see the argument. I don't mind it. I dislike the shaming -and the desire to universalize- though, it generally rubs me the wrong way.

And if the devise is real, I suspect it would just encourage a lot of men to piss with the seat down. I know I would.

I'm can see this at home, but I'd rather not touch a public toilet seat if I can help it and the sort of attitude you mention just reinforces the very problem they're trying to solve.

Amused by the idea of "relinquishing one of the main advantages of manhood" though. Lol.

[Lyanna Stark]

Well if it helps I didn't know such a party exists here :p I assume it is FI (phone posting linkage troublesome) but their main goals as far as I understand them had little to nothing to do with toilets. :)