Feminism - Post-apocalypse version

[Chaldanya]

Just now, Theda Baratheon said:

LMAO I definitely think a title Change is in order

'tis done!

@brook Feeling is mutual <3

[Mlle. Zabzie]

People opposed to the goals of the feminist movement have done a good job of coopting the term "feminist" so that it largely has negative connotations (helped along, I may add, by some soi-disant feminists of the second wave variety, I believe based on some of the knowledge I have picked up here).  Mind you, I don't think it would have mattered what the group called itself - the Rainbow Omnibus Unicorn Snugglpants movement, with the same goals, would have had the same issues ("the ROUS? I don't believe in them")).  

Which, to take a giant leap from A to Z, shows you the policing of women's language and participation in the public sphere.  

[Larry of the Lawn]

I knew I couldn't pinpoint which Mediterranean island that sculpture in the avatar hailed from, leaning towards Mansplainius.  Guessing it was the work of Tonpolicius Patriarchus?

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

6 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

I knew I couldn't pinpoint which Mediterranean island that sculpture in the avatar hailed from, leaning towards Mansplainius.  Guessing it was the work of Tonpolicius Patriarchus?

Eh, it's all Greek to me.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

2 hours ago, mankytoes said:

I mean I see what you're saying, obviously many women who have to work want to work, but I'm saying from a feminist perspective there is no political consciousness there, because there isn't a choice. So the perspective is different. That's my experience, anyway.

I find the work issue interesting, because it is such a particular idea to our modern culture, that work is actually a positive thing, yet it's something we take for granted. This video explains that really well-

As someone from lower class/income background than a lot of my peers, I do have this impression that the old fashioned view of work as negative is much more prevalent in working class communities, and the modern idea of work as positive is much more prevalent amongst the upper classes. And I think that's a big reason why feminism seems to be mainly a movement of the wealthy and the middle/upper classes.

I'm not that in tune with pop culture generally, though one thing that really does my head in (and I know this isn't exactly a unique insight) is those magazines where they take paparazzi photos of women, and speculate whether they've gained three pounds or had a boob job, or whatever.

Thanks - interesting perspective.  I wonder if it is more that the consciousness is expressed differently and in ways that earlier generations of feminists don't necessarily value, as @brook was suggesting.

The public discussion of women's bodies (as if the most important thing about them) is an important thing to add to this conversation.  Thanks for bringing it up. 

[Theda Baratheon]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

People opposed to the goals of the feminist movement have done a good job of coopting the term "feminist" so that it largely has negative connotations (helped along, I may add, by some soi-disant feminists of the second wave variety, I believe based on some of the knowledge I have picked up here).  Mind you, I don't think it would have mattered what the group called itself - the Rainbow Omnibus Unicorn Snugglpants movement, with the same goals, would have had the same issues ("the ROUS? I don't believe in them")).  

Which, to take a giant leap from A to Z, shows you the policing of women's language and participation in the public sphere.  

I'm seeing the same thing with veganism now. 

Some things are just dirty words, and the small minority of bad apples in a group suddenly become the posters for a whole movement and it's so frustrating and pernicious and hard to tackle. 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

53 minutes ago, Theda Baratheon said:

I'm seeing the same thing with veganism now. 

Some things are just dirty words, and the small minority of bad apples in a group suddenly become the posters for a whole movement and it's so frustrating and pernicious and hard to tackle. 

And as many have pointed out in previous versions of the thread, there are many versions and strands of feminism, and some of them come near to religious movements with sacred texts, doctrine and dogma.  And that is unfortunate.  But it isn't everything that is going on.  Every movement has some of that.  People like to "belong" and part of belonging is creating a community with rules and mores.  Sometimes a reminder of goals is important.

[TerraPrime]

[mod hat]

 

Derailment obliterated. Please continue with discussions that are actually useful.

 

[/mod hat]

[TerraPrime]

2 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

I'm seeing the same thing with veganism now. 

Some things are just dirty words, and the small minority of bad apples in a group suddenly become the posters for a whole movement and it's so frustrating and pernicious and hard to tackle. 

I am sure someone more intelligent has already coined the term and defined it, but it is something you see in almost all movements. Like in the gay movement, the "mainstream" gays look down on the fem bois, the drag queens, the butch dykes, and they are blamed for the hostility of the straight people against us. They would say "we would be treated more equally if it weren't for you freaks," all the while ignoring that there would be no movement to speak of without those "freaks."

 

Similarly in feminism, if there weren't angry women upset at the unfairness, there'd be no galvanizing force to organize around. It is so much bullshit to turn around and blame them for, essentially, contributing to the difficulty.

 

The bottom line is that backlashes and anger from the dominant cultural group is not a sign of failure. It is a sign of success. When they are pissed and angry, that means we're doing something right. No social justice has ever been earned by being polite.

 

So, all of this is to say that when we encounter those things, let's just adopt a "fuck'em" attitude. :-)

[Lyanna Stark]

8 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

And as many have pointed out in previous versions of the thread, there are many versions and strands of feminism, and some of them come near to religious movements with sacred texts, doctrine and dogma.  And that is unfortunate.  But it isn't everything that is going on.  Every movement has some of that.  People like to "belong" and part of belonging is creating a community with rules and mores.  Sometimes a reminder of goals is important.

This is important to remember, and also what TP is saying that if there is some backlash from the dominant cultural group, that is not a sign of failure, but one of success.

That said, feminists and feminism often get portrayed as ugly, unhappy, angry, bra-burning man-haters by popular culture, and it scares away women who are not actually disinclined to the feminist cause, they just feel they are not "that" type of woman (even if they probably are). The fact that basically every feminist I know arrived at the conclusion that they needed to become feminists from a background of actual life experience is disregarded, as if our lives don't matter, and "other women are quite happy, why can't you be, too?". Pointing out injustices in the system is seen as a character flaw.

Further, as you also stated, the Second Wave feminists and their focus on women getting into traditionally male environments, like board rooms, STEM, engineering, etc. missed out on something important, and that is that on their way to do this, they often sacrificed femininity and femaleness in their pursuit. This is also why I keep bringing up Serano, since she puts the spotlight on this in a fantastic way. It is now acceptable for women to work in traditionally male lines of work, to make a lot of money, to get educated, to take seats in the government, women can wear trousers, both figuratively and literally.

However, the opposite is not true. Men cannot wear skirts, not figuratively and not literally.

This is what Serano points out in "Whipping Girl" as well, that we still have a long way to go before femaleness and femininity are equally valued as maleness and masculinity. It's probably also one of the reasons why many women have felt alienated by the feminist movement, although the stereotype that feminists are all basically angry butch women is definitely a media construct and far less truthful than many seem inclined to believe.

However, even so, if you ask feminine women (or for that matter, feminine men), even among the "practitioners", femininity is generally seen as artificial, constructed, only surface deep, and not as *real* or natural as masculinity.

Serano writes:

Quote

If you require any evidence that femininity can be more fierce and dangerous than masculinity, all you need to do is ask the average man to hold your handbag or a bouquet of flowers for a minute, and watch how far away he holds it from his body. Or tell him that you would like to put your lipstick on him and watch how fast he runs off in the other direction. In a world where masculinity is respected and femininity is regularly dismissed, it takes an enormous amount of strength and confidence for any person, whether female- or male-bodied, to embrace their feminine self.

If we put this side by side with toxic masculinity, I think a pattern appears of how these things fit together. On the one hand you have a straightjacket of often harmful restrictions on what it means to be masculine (and for most men this would be equaled with "what it means to be a man") and then on the other hand, you have women now being more or less allowed to fit into a man's world and take up spaces traditionally reserved for men, but at the same time, this enormous elephant in the room of negative views towards femininity and femaleness still very much exist.

This is true regardless if it comes to women's physical bodies (seen as flawed next to a man's) or a feminine gender expression. The reason this is extra visible when it comes to transwomen, I think, is that they have literally done the "reverse" journey from what people expect you would want: from privilege to a position far less privileged, and this threatens the very foundations of the assumptions around male privilege, patriarchy and masculinity as superior to femininity.

In short, women can be allowed equality on men's terms, as long as they don't make noise about their female bodies, and don't insist on femininity being equally valued to masculinity. But in my view, and many others', this is in no way true equality. It's a faux state of women (of all kinds, and also people who don't fit the binary gender norms, and feminine men) being shoehorned into an existing "men's club" on men's terms, with only a few concessions made to placate and to make it seem like this is the real thing.

To quote Audre Lorde on this:

Quote

The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House

As long as there is a strong disdain for femininity, as long as it is so strongly devalued, ridiculed and scorned, then equity cannot be reached. For one, it clearly impacts how people view women as less trustworthy, less worthy of being listened to or believed. As we have seen in this thread, too. If only our tone were nicer, if we only addressed people more politely, if we could just be a bit more understanding, as if our experiences, our hurt, our anger, our fears are something we ought to suppress, again and again, constantly, to be more pleasing, to be more caring, more altruistic, more feminine. Only then are we acceptable as women and as feminists.

 

[butterbumps!]

4 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

As long as there is a strong disdain for femininity, as long as it is so strongly devalued, ridiculed and scorned, then equity cannot be reached. For one, it clearly impacts how people view women as less trustworthy, less worthy of being listened to or believed. As we have seen in this thread, too. If only our tone were nicer, if we only addressed people more politely, if we could just be a bit more understanding, as if our experiences, our hurt, our anger, our fears are something we ought to suppress, again and again, constantly, to be more pleasing, to be more caring, more altruistic, more feminine. Only then are we acceptable as women and as feminists.

 

And this is frankly one of the things that irks and concerns me about empowerment "feminism," where now all these "well behaved" women are claiming the feminist title, but ultimately just serving to champion the patriarchal rules for women's presentation rather than women themselves.  And their increased visibility as "feminists"* further skews how advocates "should" behave according to feminism skeptics, such that advocates who do not conform or dare to bring up anything more substantial than a very circumscribed "girl power" message seem even more like impolite agitator harpies.

Somewhat related to this are these three articles I just stumbled on, speaking to the differences in the way men and women writers are treated on the web. 

http://www.vox.com/identities/2016/12/8/13882562/online-harassment-women-men-journalist-twitter

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/apr/12/the-dark-side-of-guardian-comments

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/apr/14/insults-rape-threats-writers-online-harassment

 

*eta:   I'm not sure that feminism skeptics necessarily see these "empowerment feminists" as feminists so much as "strong women" they might admire and believe other women should emulate.

[mankytoes]

13 hours ago, Theda Baratheon said:

Some things are just dirty words, and the small minority of bad apples in a group suddenly become the posters for a whole movement and it's so frustrating and pernicious and hard to tackle. 

In the UK, the feminist who probably gets the most media attention is Germaine Greer. I don't know about you, but I know Lyanna shares my dislike of her. I don't think the level of attention she receives is down to anyone trying to undermine feminism- she's witty and intelligent, just with some pretty old fashioned, nasty viewpoints. And she does have the credentials of how long she's been around, and how many books she has sold. Still, if you're looking for a reason why so many people have a negative view of feminism, that's where I would start. 

[brook]

There is a lot if room between 'media plot to bring down feminism' and 'greer gets all the media spotlight just because she's witty and intelligent and wrote an influencial book nearly 50 years ago'

LOTS of feminists are witty and intelligent, looks have credentials and book sales - current ones.

Greer has had nothing particularly interesting or insightful to say for at LEAST twenty years (I think it was that long she had the weird/creepy gushing about the beauty of young boys?)

She gets media attention because people know she's going to say something outrageous and it'll make good headlines. It's got nothing to do with her credentials.

My question is WHY should Greer getting ever more desperate for headlines as she loses relevance be some kind of representative of feminism? Who else gets to be the single model of their ideology? Are all Tories considered unsafe around pork products and farm animals because of David Cameron? (honestly ok with the answer being yes here tbh)

The only reason Greer could be seen that way is if it confirms peoples existing beliefs - which makes it actually nothing to do with her at all because there is ALWAYS someone like that in every political movement. 

[Ice Queen]

I thought this article might be relevant. It's about the contrast between Hillary and Petraeus, who disclosed top secret information to his girlfriend and nothing really happened to him. 

http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/08/opinions/broadwell-petraeus-double-standard-drexler/index.html

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

4 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

However, even so, if you ask feminine women (or for that matter, feminine men), even among the "practitioners", femininity is generally seen as artificial, constructed, only surface deep, and not as *real* or natural as masculinity.

 

Well and this is just it.  To get all pop culture-y for a moment, that's why those deodorant "like a girl" commercials hit so hard.  When you live in a world where your very essence can be,and often is, used as a insult, you have to overcome value-norms set by this language to even arrive in the first place in a place where worth is perceived and appreciated.  It goes back to why so many of us are so angry.  This is part of the noise we filter out every day in our lives.

[mankytoes]

29 minutes ago, brook said:

There is a lot if room between 'media plot to bring down feminism' and 'greer gets all the media spotlight just because she's witty and intelligent and wrote an influencial book nearly 50 years ago'

LOTS of feminists are witty and intelligent, looks have credentials and book sales - current ones.

Greer has had nothing particularly interesting or insightful to say for at LEAST twenty years (I think it was that long she had the weird/creepy gushing about the beauty of young boys?)

She gets media attention because people know she's going to say something outrageous and it'll make good headlines. It's got nothing to do with her credentials.

My question is WHY should Greer getting ever more desperate for headlines as she loses relevance be some kind of representative of feminism? Who else gets to be the single model of their ideology? Are all Tories considered unsafe around pork products and farm animals because of David Cameron? (honestly ok with the answer being yes here tbh)

The only reason Greer could be seen that way is if it confirms peoples existing beliefs - which makes it actually nothing to do with her at all because there is ALWAYS someone like that in every political movement. 

I would add that she's clearly an attention seeker, who enjoys being a celebrity. If you're trying to get viewers (and lets be honest, that's what tv companies are focused on 90% of the time), I can't think of any feminist who is going to attract anything like the audience that she will- in Britain, at least. 

[Theda Baratheon]

1 hour ago, mankytoes said:

In the UK, the feminist who probably gets the most media attention is Germaine Greer. I don't know about you, but I know Lyanna shares my dislike of her. I don't think the level of attention she receives is down to anyone trying to undermine feminism- she's witty and intelligent, just with some pretty old fashioned, nasty viewpoints. And she does have the credentials of how long she's been around, and how many books she has sold. Still, if you're looking for a reason why so many people have a negative view of feminism, that's where I would start. 

Im in the UK too and I can't stand her nasty, irrelevant TERF ass. need more mainstream, smart, feminists of which there is an abundance on our TV's. I earloer posted a good article by a British feminist. Laurie Penny...I haven't seen anythin problematic from her yet but then I haven't seen much from her at all...I don't want to see greer on my TV 

[Egalitarianism Always]

Germaine Greer claims transwomen wouldn't want to be women if they had to have ovaries and a womb.  How she can say such a blatant lie and still be seen as credible in any shape or form.  There are of course transwomen who don't want to carry babies but there are just as many who do, just like with all women there's many different individuals.  Societal conforming is a tactic for dealing with uncertainty, it may bring success but at what cost, it's not worth the cost, the psychological cost is too high.  JG Ballard lost his wife and had to raise their children, he was told by a woman in the street that his children would be psychologically scarred for life that a man could never raise children and that a child needs a mother.  There are XY individuals who want to carry children, their partner is dying and they want to have children together or just because he wants to.  Gender has been a tactic to guarantee success, but it's inherently corrupt and leads to ghettos of insane individuals acting as gatekeepers.  Genetically we are all X chromosome individuals recieving 1000+ genes from our mother if we are XY individuals or the X from either mother or father if an XX individual.  An XY individual recieves 70 odd genes from their father, and an XX individual receives up to 25% from their other X chromosome.  We're all X chromosome individuals the X chromosome is not female, it is human.  

[mankytoes]

21 minutes ago, Theda Baratheon said:

Im in the UK too and I can't stand her nasty, irrelevant TERF ass. need more mainstream, smart, feminists of which there is an abundance on our TV's. I earloer posted a good article by a British feminist. Laurie Penny...I haven't seen anythin problematic from her yet but then I haven't seen much from her at all...I don't want to see greer on my TV 

Do you know if anyone on here is a TERF? Not trying to have a witch hunt, would just like to hear their perspective. Because to hold those views, you've really got to have a totally different approach to the whole issue of gender than what most people here seem to have. I dunno if you read The Guardian, but they still employ Julie Bindel (as far as I'm aware) despite her holding TERF/misandrist views (I do think the two go together). 

[Balefont]

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.