Male feminists?

[Faelar006]

[quote name='Lyanna Stark' post='1743269' date='Apr 3 2009, 03.29']Equestrian is interesting here, since women compete against men, and in my opinion women and men as athletic performers are seen as perfectly equal, while in other sports where say, upper body strength really matters, it seems women's athletic prowess is automatically devalued to a degree which correlates to "how well they compared to men", and has nothing to do with how good they are at the sport compared to their competitors.[/quote]

I'm not sure I see the problem here. Different sports focus on different aspects of athleticism and have different expectations surrounding them. North American football emphasizes a combination of strength and speed, so spectators expect to see the strongest, fastest players playing at the elite level. While a women's football league may draw some attention it will not be as popular as the men's league, not necessarily because the women players are being compared to the men, but probably because they are being compared to the expectations surrounding the sport.

It's like the NBA. I'm sure if you asked most NBA fans what they liked best about watching the NBA, "spectacular dunks" is going to be an answer fairly high on the list. So we take a look at the WNBA and see that while it draws some interest, it just isn't nearly as popular as the NBA. So we go back to the fans and ask them why they don't like it, and they'll say "it's boring." However, I'd argue that what they mean, at least for those fans who put "spectacular dunks" on their list, is that they don't like it because it doesn't meet what they expect from the sport.

Now, I'd certainly argue that expectations regarding the sport could change, but I'd argue that this is a result of the evolution of the sport, such as the forward pass in football or the loss of stigma surrounding the slam dunk in basketball, rather than culturally imposed gender biases.

In fact, looking at women's basketball in particular, I'd argue a major hindrance of its popularity is that it plays much like the men's game did 50 years ago. Yes, women's basketball has the shot clock and the 3 point line, but it still plays as a much slower game than the men's game does.

Faelar

[Undead Dungeon Master]

I was looking for an introduction thread, but found this thread instead.

So I'm a man, and I have taken a few of women's studies classes (community college level), and read a lot of feminist literature, and I was raised by a feminist. But I am not a feminist. I reject the label for two broad reasons:

First, I just find the ideological feminism promoted with academic to be intellectually dishonest and rigidly ideological, and most of all deeply mired in victimization.

As an example, on the first day in my Gender & Violence class the professor made a claim that was not only factually untrue, but grossly misleading. She claimed there had never been a single female serial or spree killer. I found this hilarious because just six days before the class began a female post officer employee in California had killed her neighbor, six co-workers, then herself in brutal spree killing. In reality 3% of all spree killers are women. Something like 99% of all poisoners are women though, and if you count "Angels of Mercy" -- nurses who abuse their position to kill patients with drug overdoes -- then the number of female serial killers comes pretty close to parity with men.

Later the same professor professed a strong belief in the "Burning Times," which are historically extremely questionable, and certainly never took the form of the sort of mass killings of women she described.

These are just small examples, but they abounded throughout all the classes. Things that were easily refuted with a moment of research were routinely presented as fact. We were told that incidents of rape had been rising steadily since the 70's, and this was presented as a "backlash against feminism." But RAINN, a very pro-feminist rape awareness organization, promotes statistics that indicate the exact opposite (a 70% drop over the last three decades, much closer to what you'd expect with the much greater awareness of women's rights over that time period). I was really shocked to discover that the infamous 1 in 4 statistic (1 in 4 women will be raped in her lifetime) required counting women who had married their rapists post-rape, and counted any woman who had recieved a single alcoholic beverage from a man before sex as a rape victim.

I find things like are actually very disempowering of women. Saying a woman loses all conscious violation after one drink seems to play right into the "woman as weak and delicate flower" mythology.

What worried me most though was the way all of these professors played up on the women in the classes fears, and in every class I would watch a few women transform over the course of a class from people who knew nothing about feminism into rabid, paranoid misandrists. I don't think that's a very empowered way to live your life.

The second thing about academic feminism -- which is I think what most people when they pooh-pooh feminism -- that bothers me is the focus on issues that have nothing to do with women, especially the gender identity issues. Gay marriage is not a feminist issue, and neither is government funded sex change operations. Those are entirely separate issues, but they seem to have come to dominate feminism, both in colleges and on internet forums. And this stuff gets really crazy, with women insisting your a hateful "transphobe" if you don't immediately accept that they "really are men" because they wore a men's shirt and pants...but don't you dare assume that lesbian in men's clothes is transgender! It's this ridiculously ideological take on gender vs sex that places ridiculous importance on the existence of third genders (a person can easily go their entire lifetime never meeting a person born differently gendered), and worse turns expressions of gender identity in a new morality -- the more ambiguously gendered you are, the better you are!

I noticed this trend first in a class on Feminism in Sci-Fi, where we were given a story called "Reeseburgers." In the story a scientist, Reese, solves the world's food crises by making food from algae. At the same time many people throughout society are spontaneously transforming into hermaphodites. The mainstream responds by turning totally Nazi fascist, complete with goose-stepping soldiers marching down streets. Then the "world's smartest biologist" announces he has discovered the cause of the transformation. If you thought it was the algae, you're a better writer than the person who wrote this tripe. Because rather than fire Chekov's Gun, we find out the cause is: God! God is making everyone hermaphrodites because hermaphrodites are more perfect people than lowly males and females (and every hermaphrodite in the story is presented as a Mary Sue). The story ends with a group of a transgendered terrorists seizing a government building and force feeding people -- a one-dimensional fat, greasy transphobic security guard -- specially developed reeseburgers that force the transformation. And this is horrifying violation of the man's right to self-determination presented as heroic. And despite its deus ex machina explanation purports to be "science fiction."

I have no idea what that has to do with feminism. I took the class thinking we'd be reading authors like LeGuin and at worst I'd have to read Handmaid's Tale again, but instead we got absolutely nothing that came remotely close to being actual sci-fi. No LeGuin at all! I asked the professors (there were two) if they'd read Lathe of Heaven (my favorite LeGuin) and they'd never heard of it. The main book we had to read was some dreary thing about an aging hispanic maid who gets sent to an insane asylum when her whoring daughter's pimp boyfriend punches her in the head and gives her a concussion. She then either travels through time or imagines another time, and I dropped the class because it was just too depressing to read anymore of it. I got to about page 60 and just couldn't take another page.

I think of feminism as being issues that affect women, and as a liberal, I tend to think "working and middle class women." So breast cancer research (my mom is a survivor), and accessible child care, and safe legal abortion, and equal pay are real feminist issues, not all this crazy "you're evil if you don't immediately understand and accept our bizarre theories abut the morality of gender" nonsense.

I think that those liberal feminist values are widely held by most people in my culture, and I think that feminism has largely "won." But it takes time for things to change. I'm part of the first generation born after feminism, the sexual revolution and the civil rights movement, and the oldest members --male and female alike -- of my cohort are still struggling to achieve political power and management position, but as they do far more women are rising to positions of power than ever before -- here in Washington my congressional representative, both my senators, and my governor are women. The next generation, my generations kids, are going to be even more skewed towards women -- especially if education trends remain stable and more women continue to go to college than men.

It's a snowball, it's rolling, and inertia is going to carry it along. And I think the problem academic feminism has is justifying its continued existence...hence the focus on glbt issues, the rape fear mongering, the calculated misandry. And I really don't think it needs active promotion anymore. We can stop pushing the snowball.

Overall, I'd say that its meaningless to say you're a feminist in the sense of an egalitarian, because really only true idiots and dips aren't. Its like believing in evolution, or secular government. You're a fringe weirdo if you don't think women should earn equal pay or be able to run for office, etc.

That's why I think saying "I'm a feminist." these days is like saying "I'm a libertarian." or "I'm a Marxist." or "I'm a young earth creationist." all of which translate to "I'm a daydream believer." at best and "I'm an ideological nutter." at worst.

I worry that modern feminism is more disempowering -- teaching women to be deathly afraid of men, to see themselves as victims of invisible social pressures they can't control, to surrender their own agency -- and is overadjusting. I don't know that society can survive the complete dissolution of gender roles in their entirety. I don't know that becoming grey aliens with no secondary sexual characteristics is really the right utopian goal for humanity. I think the dynamic of masculine and feminine is of vital importance to a healthy society, and I think modern feminism has wrongly set its sights on destroying masculinity and feminity rather that elevating societies appreciation of feminine power.

Academic feminists are the only people I've known who make claims like a father signing up his daughter for martial arts so she can learn to be confident and ready to deal with a violent offender is a horrible misogynist who blames women for getting raped. Because see, if you give your daughter the ability to defend herself rather than magically compel all men to stop raping, then you are "allowing" men to rape and making it women's responsibility.

But somehow when my dad taught me how to fight off a bully, one of the most empowering and powerful memories of my childhood, that wasn't placing the blame for being victimized on me.

So me, I'm a post-feminist. I think feminism is old news, the yoke of patriarchy has been shattered, yadda yadda, and we need to be thinking about the future, not dwelling on the past and trying to place blame on everyone. I think feminism holds women back more than anything else, and I note that most successful women are liberal feminists but not modern academic or radical feminists. Like Oprah, or Hillary, or Michelle Obama.

[Happy Ent]

Undead, that was an erudite, careful, honest, and friendly post. May there be many more! Welcome to the board.

[The Pita]

Undead, were I as eloquent as you, I'd probably write a similar post.

Although neither of my parents are feminists, besides the belief that all people are equal.

[dalThor]

Undead, that was an erudite, careful, honest, and friendly post.

Undead, were I as eloquent as you, I'd probably write a similar post.

That was really, umm, long.

(Very well written.)

Welcome! :)

[Lyanna Stark]

So me, I'm a post-feminist. I think feminism is old news, the yoke of patriarchy has been shattered, yadda yadda, and we need to be thinking about the future, not dwelling on the past and trying to place blame on everyone. I think feminism holds women back more than anything else, and I note that most successful women are liberal feminists but not modern academic or radical feminists. Like Oprah, or Hillary, or Michelle Obama.

That depends on who you listen to, doesn't it?

If you pick the nutjobs (sadly they are often in Academia) then yes, feminism is full of crazy.

However, you will also note that most of these people are middleclass with middleclass issues, and are missing the point with where feminism stands today, in reality. Where the focus should be especially on groups that were previously not included, on women in third world countries and emerging economics, instead of navel gazing and victimhood. That's not to say that the "old issues" are all in the clear. Work place sexism, abortion right, the extremely low conviction rate for rape cases, domestic violence incompetence in the police force, etc. etc.

As for post-feminism being here and feminist goals being achieved, I am sorry to have to disappoint you. :) I'm almost 33, have worked for a number of years and encountered enough eye watering sexism to know it is not at all dead. It is alive, kicking and extremely stubborn. I didn't use to be a feminism during my younger years, I have come to become one through my experiences and the encounters I have had with sexism.

To name a few:

* Potential employers asking women about their future family plans during interviews

* Removal of interesting and technically challenging project tasks due to gender

* More negative appraisals due to gender

* Sexist comments during wage negotiations

* "Blonde" jokes and similar "fun" being common in the work place

* Comments about women's looks being common in the work place

* Customers not trusting the technical expertise of female engineers

This is only what I can think of off the top of my head. That is without getting started on the sexist nature of maternity leave and maternity pay. Or for that matter paternity pay and leave, or perhaps more accurately: the absence thereof.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

That depends on who you listen to, doesn't it?

This. As I was reading the post, I was mostly thinking, 'okay, so you had crazy professors. And you concluded from this....'

Alright, he did say something about crazy people in internet forums too, but didn't provide any examples, so I mostly tuned that out.

ETA: Not trying to be dickish, UDM, just sharing my reaction. Welcome aboard.

[Undead Dungeon Master]

First of all, thanks to the people who had complimentary things to say. And yes, it was long. As you might guess from the fact that I've taken several women's studies courses, this is an issue that is important to me and I think about. I am also a writer (like I suspect many on this board are), so obviously passion + writing experience = long posts. This post won't be any shorter. :)

So on to the other responses.

That depends on who you listen to, doesn't it?

It really does, but I think it's fairly reasonable to look at academia for the "voice of feminism," as academia is where these idea originate and are perpetuated. It's also the only branch of feminism that is actually organized into a meaningful movement. When it comes to feminism, the reasonable voices tend to be alone in the wilderness.

The fact is that you have to look to the fringes of feminism to find reasonable voices. The modern intellectual leaders of the movement are very suspect. Consider best-selling Naomi Wolf, author of The Beauty Myth, a hugely influential work. Beauty Myth is chock full of completely fabricated statistics, such as the claim that 200,000 girls die from anorexia every year (the reality at time of publication was 54 deaths in the previous ten years, half a result of suicide), and truly whacko assertions. She even compares anorexia in the suburbs to the brutal treatment of Jews at Dachau. No, seriously, she makes that comparison!

Wolf at one point makes the claim that the black turtleneck, popularized by beats in the 60's and immortalized by Audrey Hepburn, is symbolic of men's desire to strangle women. She makes no attempt to defend the assertion or justify it, she just says it is so and moves on. Things like that really undermine the whole argument she is making.

(Also, I find this line of argument unconvincing. Most people --including feminists -- think it's fair to judge Objectivists, libertarians, Marxists, fundamentalists, Scientologists, etc. by the whacko leadership of these "movements." It's only when the whacko leadership of feminism is questioned that feminists seem to remember that the "whacko fringe" (which again is the leadership) doesn't represent all of feminism. Since liek most reasonable people I'm quite happy to judge Objectivism on the basis of people like Ayn Rand and Terry Goodkind, I feel it's only fair to treat feminism the same.)

However, you will also note that most of these people are middleclass with middleclass issues, and are missing the point with where feminism stands today, in reality. Where the focus should be especially on groups that were previously not included, on women in third world countries and emerging economics, instead of navel gazing and victimhood.

Yeah, most people in our culture are middle class with middle class issues. That's where the mainstream lies. We're very bourgeois.

Anyways, those are issues that extend well past the limits of feminism. I'm speaking from an American perspective, but I think this extends to Europe as well, but the issue of third world sexism is extremely problematic for the West. Given the history of colonial imposition of Western values and the violent and catastrophic results, the West cannot lightly set itself up as the arbitrator of other culture's values. The issues of third world women will have to be addressed by third world women. While feminists in the West can certainly be allies in their struggle, we must necessarily sit on the sidelines and limit ourselves to cheering and donating to worthy causes. And that is the position of someone who has essentially solved their own problems.

As for post-feminism being here and feminist goals being achieved, I am sorry to have to disappoint you. :) I'm almost 33, have worked for a number of years and encountered enough eye watering sexism to know it is not at all dead. It is alive, kicking and extremely stubborn. I didn't use to be a feminism during my younger years, I have come to become one through my experiences and the encounters I have had with sexism.

I'm 33 myself, and I have encounter plenty of sexism in my life as well. I've dealt with patronizing women who assumed that because I was a man I was a stupid clod, I've dealt with female employers who thought it was entirely reasonable to constantly task me with manual labor while giving the more noteworthy work to my equally qualified female co-workers, simultaneously reducing me to a beast of burden and denying me opportunities to prove my value to the company. I can't watch an hour of TV without seeing at least one commercial that reminds me that men are stupid and need women to make them smart.

Anyone seen the cereal commercial where the husband asks his wife if she's dieting because she's suddenly eating a low-fat cereal? She glares at him and he apologizes for his "obvious" stupidity, saying "Shut up Steve." to himself. The self-emasculating man is one of the more popular archetypes in modern culture, from Steve in the ad to Homer Simpson and a million other TV dads who are portrayed as vastly intellectually and morally inferior to their wives. Women may grow up being told that they need to attract a man to be worthwhile, but men receive the exact same message.

The fact is that a large amount of sexism is the result of people being stupid. There is no way to stop idiots from making gross generalizations based on their limited understanding of the world around them. No amount of social engineering can make stupid irresponsible people stop blaming others for their own failures. This means there will always be men who insist that women are all stupid because they can't make themselves understood, just as there will always be women who think all men are evil because they have failed to recognize their own issues drive them to date jerks.

And don't for a second think that embracing feminism makes people any less prone to this sort of stereotyping, generalization and stupidity. I live in Seattle, and when I was in high school the city elected four out lesbians to the nine-member city council in a fervor of political correctness. One of them survived the next election (but not the next), as the other three were mind-bogglingly incompetent, voted in solely on the merit of being lesbians. No ideology is a substitute for paying attention and thinking about what you're doing, but all ideologies serve as replacements for actually thinking. Ideologies, like religions, remove doubt and replace it with certainty. But inevitably that certainty is founded on irrational premises that don't hold true in reality, or in metaphysical assertions that can't be falsified.

I can point you to forums in the internet that are chock full of hundreds of crazy wacko feminists. On livejournal there is a lovely forum called "feminist_rage" run by a woman who calls herself a "homicidal lesbian terrorist" and champions Solanas's SCUM (society for cutting up men) Manifesto. The forum rules prevent anyone from ever questioning the legitimacy of another woman's "rage," which means that you get fun posts like a woman in 2005 screaming about how sexist society is based on an car advertisement from 1973...ten years before she was born. The person who pointed out that the car ad in question (in black and white, and so obviously the 70's it hurt) was more than 25 years old and thus probably not worth raging over was banned for not respecting another woman's anger. It's literally an echo chamber that encourages it's members to seek out trivial things to get worked up over, and its members look more and more ludicrous with every passing year.

And I don't want to sound like I'm bashing women, because there are men just like this (but generally subscribing to other ideologies), but I've known many incredibly irrational women who embraced feminism and simply stopped thinking. I stopped participating in feminist forums because I got tired of how often I was accused of being sexist for asking someone to simply explain their reasoning, or accused of misogyny because I corrected someone's facts.

One of the issues that really bugs me, and I touched on this in my first post, is the current feminist position on rape. Which essentially amounts to 'women shouldn't do anything as individuals to protect themselves individually from sexual assault because men shouldn't be assaulting women in the first place.' These are the women who think that the fact that we can't have a day without rape proves that men don't care about stopping rape. That we can't have a day without crime period, or hell even a day without war, seems irrelevant to them. The logic being that if so much as one man is an evil bastard to women, then all men are benefitting from that bastardry. Now, I've been involved in awareness campaigns and I count Jackson Katz (who developed the most comprehensive sexual assault awareness program for boys in the country) among my personal friends, but I also strongly support programs that empower women to protect themselves from danger.

This, to me, is like saying we shouldn't have cops because that sends the signal that its okay to commit crime. Or like saying that it isn't stupid to walk down a dark alleyway in a high crime neighborhood because muggers shouldn't mug people. Well sure muggers shouldn't mug people, but in reality they do, and pretending they don't and that there's not a single step one can take to protect oneself from

I've been mugged three times, and while I don't blame myself for any of these assaults, I also can clearly recognize the actions I took that lead to me getting mugged. And I have changed my behavior since then (meaning I stopped staggering home alone while drunk from nightclubs), and have not been mugged since. Oh no, I've let the muggers win!

::headdesk::

Seriously, feminists forums are no different than any other ideological forum. The average feminist is every bit as pig-headed, irrational and delusional as the average objectivist, with about the same level of understanding of their own movement and the same total ignorance of other ways of thinking (there's nothing worse than a feminist who has no understanding at all of the Enlightenment philosophy and humanist origins of feminism. It blows me away how many ardent self-proclaimed feminists I've met who have never heard of let alone read A Vindication of the Rights of Women. Any hope that they might recognize names like Locke and Hume, the men Wollstonecraft was responding to, should be quickly dashed.).

And just like objectivism, feminism is chock full of memes developed to prevent thinking. When the average feminist accuses someone of being sexist or misogynistic, they are operating from the exact same place the average objectivist is coming from when they accuse others of lacking "moral clarity" or possessing a "hatred of the truth." "Misogynist" has a meaning, but in actual use it becomes a term like "socialist" as used by the Right: devoid of meaningful content, a label to slap on people to justify ignoring their rational arguments or concrete facts.

Lest you think I'm being nihilistic and claiming that nothing can be done, let me say instead that I'm actually quite the optimist and think that things aren't nearly as bad as people convince themselves. For example, I think your entire post is underline by problematic "grass is greener" thinking. I think if you were a man, you'd find that it's not really any better or worse, just a bit different.

And finally:

I'm just going to guess you have mommy issues. I'd also say you lack some self-confidence/self-esteem judging by the content of your criticism.

::sigh:: Every forum has to have at least one. I'm going to guess that you're a wanker because your first response to me was personal attacks disguised as armchair psychology. Welcome to IGNORE.

[Bellis]

Welcome to the board UDM.

Interesting posts. As for myself, I tend to get amused at people who claim that racism, sexism, homophobia, etc is dead or dying. But perhaps I'm just envious that people like you lead such privileged lives (middle class, western, probably white, educated) that you don't see it. I don't mean this to be snarky, just to reiterate that in the global South or third world or what have you (and immigrant communities in the west) there's a long way still to go.

ETA: I would also suggest that people not be passive-aggressive about that IGNORE button ;)

[potsherds]

Interesting posts. As for myself, I tend to get amused at people who claim that racism, sexism, homophobia, etc is dead or dying. But perhaps I'm just envious that people like you lead such privileged lives (middle class, western, probably white, educated) that you don't see it. I don't mean this to be snarky, just to reiterate that in the global South or third world or what have you (and immigrant communities in the west) there's a long way still to go.

I used to get amused, now I just get irritated and mean. :P I really don't understand how someone can NOT see that all these discrimination issues are far from resolved unless they're simply not paying attention or don't care because it doesn't affect them. :dunno:

[ljkeane]

I used to get amused, now I just get irritated and mean. :P I really don't understand how someone can NOT see that all these discrimination issues are far from resolved unless they're simply not paying attention or don't care because it doesn't affect them. :dunno:

To be fair, although I may have missed it in the rather long posts, I don't think he was claiming that there are not problems to be addressed just that he has some criticisms of current feminist ideology as presented by the feminist academics he has encountered. Whether these criticisms are accurate I don't know :dunno:

[Red Sun]

I'm not really familiar with the academic feminism, except for the classics like Simone de Beauvoir, but I think that it's too short-sighted to consider them as the one and true voice of "feminism".

That said, I think it's a fallacy to talk about "the current feminist position on rape", as you did in your first post and in the following:

One of the issues that really bugs me, and I touched on this in my first post, is the current feminist position on rape. Which essentially amounts to 'women shouldn't do anything as individuals to protect themselves individually from sexual assault because men shouldn't be assaulting women in the first place.' These are the women who think that the fact that we can't have a day without rape proves that men don't care about stopping rape. That we can't have a day without crime period, or hell even a day without war, seems irrelevant to them. The logic being that if so much as one man is an evil bastard to women, then all men are benefitting from that bastardry. Now, I've been involved in awareness campaigns and I count Jackson Katz (who developed the most comprehensive sexual assault awareness program for boys in the country) among my personal friends, but I also strongly support programs that empower women to protect themselves from danger.

This, to me, is like saying we shouldn't have cops because that sends the signal that its okay to commit crime. Or like saying that it isn't stupid to walk down a dark alleyway in a high crime neighborhood because muggers shouldn't mug people. Well sure muggers shouldn't mug people, but in reality they do, and pretending they don't and that there's not a single step one can take to protect oneself from

I don't believe that all of "the current" feminists would actively fight the idea of self-defence courses. In fact, I know quite a lot feminists who do martial arts or other forms of self-defence. However, the problem with rape is that only a certain number are committed by "muggers" or random strangers, most cases happen within a closer circle of aquaintances which makes everything more complicated.

[potsherds]

To be fair, although I may have missed it in the rather long posts, I don't think he was claiming that there are not problems to be addressed just that he has some criticisms of current feminist ideology as presented by the feminist academics he has encountered. Whether these criticisms are accurate I don't know :dunno:

The fallacy is in assuming he is familiar with all feminist thought on the various issues by taking a couple of courses at a community college. The only thing I ever really understand about feminist ideologies is that there are a lot of them, there's some stark disagreement in some areas, and I don't personally ascribe to any one set of views on various issues. My opinions are formed by my own experiences. Academia is nice, but it's usually a little bit removed from the realities of a more complicated world, and doesn't take into account when a situation must be addressed in a pragmatic way instead of an idealistic one. Anyone trying to broadbrush feminism and feminists is really missing a lot of understanding on the entire issue.

[Nous]

(Also, I find this line of argument unconvincing. Most people --including feminists -- think it's fair to judge Objectivists, libertarians, Marxists, fundamentalists, Scientologists, etc. by the whacko leadership of these "movements." It's only when the whacko leadership of feminism is questioned that feminists seem to remember that the "whacko fringe" (which again is the leadership) doesn't represent all of feminism. Since liek most reasonable people I'm quite happy to judge Objectivism on the basis of people like Ayn Rand and Terry Goodkind, I feel it's only fair to treat feminism the same.)

Terry Goodkind is not 'a leader' in Objectivist circles. To the (small) extent there currently exists an Objectivist "movement", the leaders are guys like Leonard Peikoff or Yaron Brook. Ayn Rand was the founder of the philosophy, of course. I must say your characterization of Objectivism is incorrect in every way. I doubt you'll take my word for it, though.

[Undead Dungeon Master]

Interesting posts. As for myself, I tend to get amused at people who claim that racism, sexism, homophobia, etc is dead or dying. But perhaps I'm just envious that people like you lead such privileged lives (middle class, western, probably white, educated) that you don't see it. I don't mean this to be snarky, just to reiterate that in the global South or third world or what have you (and immigrant communities in the west) there's a long way still to go.

I know a bunch of Southerners whose toes you just stepped on. :)

I don't think racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. (only one of those has anything to do with feminism) is dead or dying, but I do think -- and can argue very persuasively -- that they are no longer middle-class values, and are largely absent amongst educated westerners. It's not that I don't see it, it's that I don't see it from people who actually matter. I don't see in the mainstream of television

If you want to make the point that uneducated people have uneducated beliefs, and are especially vulnerable to the predations of religious charlatans who peddle hate as virture. Well, yeah. Dumb people is dumb. Feminism does nothing to address this, and the feminist movement has mostly produced a backlash that has only made these fringe groups more reactionary and cling tighter to their hatred of anyone different.

Unless you're willing to invade the third world, overthrow their cultural institutions, and institute a massive program to destroy their native culture and replace it with our own, then...yeah, so what of it? Not our problem, and more importantly not something we should make our problem.

To potsherd and Red Sun:

The problem I have with the arguments you are making is that, if taken to their logical conclusion, nothing can be said about feminism. Because feminism is everything. Any position you care to name can be found being expressed by someone calling themselves a feminist, including the position that feminist is "a vegetable bin for the moldy neurosis of a clatch of sob sisters." That's from 'feminist' Camile Pagilia.

My big problem here is that by making the argument you are making, you kill all possibly of conversation about feminism. Because the word then refers to nothing, just a nebulous cloud of random ideas had by random people with no connecting. You can't discuss something that vague in any meaningful way, so to discuss feminism we have to first have some solid idea of what feminism is.

Basing feminism off what is taught in women's studies courses makes sense. We define biology by what academic biologists say, not by what anyone who calls themselves a biologist says. We recognize that while some creationists, such as the staff of the Discovery Institute, purport to be scientists they are not. But following your logic, we can't say "Biologist agree on evolution" because there are plenty or armchair biologist and nonacademic wanna-bes and ignorant dumbasses appropriating labels that don't agree with (or even begin to understand) evolution.

If we do that, then we can reasonably say that modern feminism is shaped by feminist philosophers and critics like Bouverier, Wolf, bell hooks, Judith Butler (the mother of modern gender theory, and one of the most head-scratchingly obtuse writers ever. And I say that having read Derrida). And that these leaders have lead feminism far away from anything remotely resembling reality.

To be fair, although I may have missed it in the rather long posts, I don't think he was claiming that there are not problems to be addressed just that he has some criticisms of current feminist ideology as presented by the feminist academics he has encountered.

More precisely I think that modern feminism is so mired in the failures inherent to ideological movements that it is entirely incapable of actually recognizing and addressing the problems that remain, and in fact generally does more harm than good.

If the current problems are nails that need to be pounded down into wood, then feminism is a spatula. The wrong tool for the job.

Terry Goodkind is not 'a leader' in Objectivist circles. To the (small) extent there currently exists an Objectivist "movement", the leaders are guys like Leonard Peikoff or Yaron Brook. Ayn Rand was the founder of the philosophy, of course. I must say your characterization of Objectivism is incorrect in every way. I doubt you'll take my word for it, though.

Fine, not leader then but "mainstream proponent."

As for my characterization of Objectivism being incorrect...no, I think I've got a pretty solid handle on objectivism. I've read the literature, argue the issue with dozens of objectivists, and not once have I ever thought that objectivism had even the slightest merit.

Objectivism is without a doubt the single most stupid philosophy I have ever encountered. Fascism seems like a soul of rationality compared to Objectivism, which is entirely predicated on delusion. I've yet to meet the objectivist who wasn't a total clod.

The simple fact is this: While there may be an objective world, we do not live in it and more importantly never experience in our lives. All of our experience of the world is mediated through our senses which leave us living in a perpetual virtual reality -- a virtual reality in turn shaped by subjective experience. No one is capable of being truly rational: irrationality underlies the whole of human experience. I got the science to prove it. Our brains simply aren't computers, and emotionality underlies all of our thoughts. And so because objectivism is based on a provably false premise (that we live in a world that can be know objectively), it can only reach false conclusions.

That's why a moral system that eschews emotionality is doomed to fail. Reason without emotion is a terrifying thing, and can be used to justify endless cruelty to others, by simply shutting oneself off towards any empathy to their screams of pain as you kill them. This is why all meaningful moral systems are founded on compassion. Any real philosophy must embrace this, must be founded on both reason and compassion, or it will surely fail. That objectivism is predicated on the condemantion of compassion and community is why it will never be more than a laughable fringe movement mostly populated by emotionally-crippled men with self-esteem issues.

The Objectivist invariably is a self-deluding narcissist, convinced that he and no one else sees reality for what it truly is, and then becomes he is angry and resentful at the way all the clods hold him back, never seeing that it is the ability to get along with the "clods" that actually leads to success.

He sees himself as the latest incarnation of John Galt, but more likely embodies the Dunning Kruger effect. He eschews altruism (and thus compassion) as irrational, and in the process becomes worse than irrational himself: he becomes a deluded fanatic. One simply needs to read objectivist fiction, which is so unrealistic as to be laughable, to see that the notion that objectivism leads to a clear understanding of the world around us is dead wrong.

But yeah, I don't ever expect to see eye to eye with an objectivist. I'm a zeitic, a new model agnostic, which is just about the polar opposite of an objectivist. If you want to continue this conversation (and I'll understand if you don't), I'd start a new thread.

[Max the Mostly Mediocre]

I don't think racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. (only one of those has anything to do with feminism) is dead or dying, but I do think -- and can argue very persuasively -- that they are no longer middle-class values, and are largely absent amongst educated westerners. It's not that I don't see it, it's that I don't see it from people who actually matter. I don't see in the mainstream of television

You don't see overt sexism, or you don't see sexism, period?

[Bellis]

I know a bunch of Southerners whose toes you just stepped on. :)

Global South. As opposed to the Global North. Nothing to do with the United States.

I don't think racism, sexism, homophobia, etc. (only one of those has anything to do with feminism) is dead or dying, but I do think -- and can argue very persuasively -- that they are no longer middle-class values, and are largely absent amongst educated westerners. It's not that I don't see it, it's that I don't see it from people who actually matter.

It's your middle class white privilege that makes it so that those people do not matter to you. Not all of us have that luxury.

Unless you're willing to invade the third world, overthrow their cultural institutions, and institute a massive program to destroy their native culture and replace it with our own, then...yeah, so what of it? Not our problem, and more importantly not something we should make our problem.

What's "theirs"? What's "ours"? Hint: you're making some assumptions about your audience here ;) But yeah, I agree that the last thing we want is those people over there, like cross-town, coming and telling us what issues define our feminist struggle. :)

[potsherds]

To potsherd and Red Sun:

The problem I have with the arguments you are making is that, if taken to their logical conclusion, nothing can be said about feminism. Because feminism is everything. Any position you care to name can be found being expressed by someone calling themselves a feminist, including the position that feminist is "a vegetable bin for the moldy neurosis of a clatch of sob sisters." That's from 'feminist' Camile Pagilia.

My big problem here is that by making the argument you are making, you kill all possibly of conversation about feminism. Because the word then refers to nothing, just a nebulous cloud of random ideas had by random people with no connecting. You can't discuss something that vague in any meaningful way, so to discuss feminism we have to first have some solid idea of what feminism is.

We're going to have to agree to disagree then. The basic idea behind feminism (imo) is progress toward equality for women. Different people have different ideas on how to approach and solve issues within this framework; I see nothing wrong with allowing anyone to consider him or herself a feminist if they've an honest desire to see true equality between the genders. :dunno:

Basing feminism off what is taught in women's studies courses makes sense. We define biology by what academic biologists say, not by what anyone who calls themselves a biologist says. We recognize that while some creationists, such as the staff of the Discovery Institute, purport to be scientists they are not. But following your logic, we can't say "Biologist agree on evolution" because there are plenty or armchair biologist and nonacademic wanna-bes and ignorant dumbasses appropriating labels that don't agree with (or even begin to understand) evolution.

This is a really bad analogy. You can't try to compare the rigour, volumes of data, and analysis that goes into the study of a science, like Biology, to a philosophy that, in academia, exists in a partial vacuum outside the realities of the world. Which I note, you and I both agree on. It's one of those things about philosophies. Generally they follow an ideal that is usually impractical and must be altered when used in the real world.

More precisely I think that modern feminism is so mired in the failures inherent to ideological movements that it is entirely incapable of actually recognizing and addressing the problems that remain, and in fact generally does more harm than good.

If the current problems are nails that need to be pounded down into wood, then feminism is a spatula. The wrong tool for the job.

I think you're misplacing the blame, for one thing. Sure, every movement has it's crazies. And you're welcome to disagree with some of the prominent ones. :dunno: Feminism though, has been given a bad name by detractors much more than some of the crazier proponents. I can't help but assume that if you honestly feel that feminism doesn't have faults, but is just completely antiquated/outdated/incorrect/etc., you're buying into the propaganda of detractors, and/or simply don't want the stigma that comes with being labeled a feminist by others. Feminism isn't going to go away. Probably mostly because that's a pretty clearly understood word, so ascribing it to the goal/cause of gender equality isn't going to change. You'd be more helpful to this issue if you were a thoughtful critic within the movement than someone saying that the movement is bad for women, or no longer works at all.

[Guest Raidne]

UDM, First, let me apologize for the general "man say bad things about feminism = bad man" kneejerk reaction people often have here. I admit, I also thought you were writing the typical long feminist-bashing post and did not start off reading with a sympathetic mindset, but, no, you're not. I have had many of the same experiences with academic classes in women's studies and feminism.

IThe main book we had to read was some dreary thing about an aging hispanic maid who gets sent to an insane asylum when her whoring daughter's pimp boyfriend punches her in the head and gives her a concussion. She then either travels through time or imagines another time, and I dropped the class because it was just too depressing to read anymore of it. I got to about page 60 and just couldn't take another page.

That's actually Woman on the Edge of Time. The beginning is awful, but it does kind of redeem itself as they really get into the future world where babies are all incubated, people all live separately, and there is no marriage.

Apparently you missed out on Egalia's Daughters, where the women rape men by humping their legs and make them wear bras for their twig and berries?

I have to admit, I still own both these books. :lol:

Something else though, that I've never, ever considered before - I have watched that same process happen to women in those classes. Even me, to an extent. It's different from a person's first experience of feminist consciousness-raising. Thanks for pointing that out. It is a problem.

I, for one, call those people pro-woman, anti-feminist whack-jobs (or, in a more PC fashion, radical feminists), but it is problematic that they call themselves feminists. There are so many good reasonable women feminists though. You know, it's like Susan Okin called herself a feminist, and I admired her thoughts on the subject so much, how can I not?

Also, a tip - the professors I had on philosophy classes on women were waay better than the women's studies classes, which were, ironically, anti-academic, for dumb people, and full of misandrists. The kind of class where you sit around in a circle and talk about Barbie, not the kind of class where you sit around and talk about sex discrimination and the financial effects of divorce of women.

Same with law too - Law and Gender was a serious class, taught by an excellent Professor, who was also capable of teaching Property and other difficult classes and didn't just go into Women's Studies because she wasn't smart enough to support herself doing anything else.

ETA: And I should add that there are plenty of people focusing on gender in other disciplines who are adamantly against the interdisciplinary program called "women's studies." It has no method, nothing holding it together as an academic discipline, unlike biology. So, in all fairness, please don't base what feminism is on what the most radical, least intelligent people studying it have to say about. It would be like saying intelligent design theorists are the leading experts on metaphysics.

And I'm limiting my comments on Women's Studies to the United States. I know nothing about other countries.

Anyway, welcome to the board, best post I've read in awhile.

And don't get distressed about Pots exemplifying your points while arguing against them. She really does more damage when she agrees with you. ;)

[Nous]

Fine, not leader then but "mainstream proponent."

I don't know whether he is, but characterize him that way if you wish.

The simple fact is this: While there may be an objective world, we do not live in it and more importantly never experience in our lives. All of our experience of the world is mediated through our senses which leave us living in a perpetual virtual reality -- a virtual reality in turn shaped by subjective experience. No one is capable of being truly rational: irrationality underlies the whole of human experience. I got the science to prove it. Our brains simply aren't computers, and emotionality underlies all of our thoughts. And so because objectivism is based on a provably false premise (that we live in a world that can be know objectively), it can only reach false conclusions.

I presume that the science you have to back up your views is objective.

That's why a moral system that eschews emotionality is doomed to fail. Reason without emotion is a terrifying thing, and can be used to justify endless cruelty to others, by simply shutting oneself off towards any empathy to their screams of pain as you kill them. This is why all meaningful moral systems are founded on compassion. Any real philosophy must embrace this, must be founded on both reason and compassion, or it will surely fail. That objectivism is predicated on the condemantion of compassion and community is why it will never be more than a laughable fringe movement mostly populated by emotionally-crippled men with self-esteem issues.

To correct the actual claims you made about Objectivism: Objectivism is not predicated on condemnation of compassion and community. If I'm wrong about this, it should be easy enough for you to find an Ayn Rand quote to back up your assertion. Which you will not be able to do.

And I certainly don't agree that all meaningful moral systems are founded on compassion. From the big philosophical ones, Hume's theory is the only one that comes to mind quickly as a candidate.

The Objectivist invariably is a self-deluding narcissist, convinced that he and no one else sees reality for what it truly is, and then becomes he is angry and resentful at the way all the clods hold him back, never seeing that it is the ability to get along with the "clods" that actually leads to success.

He sees himself as the latest incarnation of John Galt, but more likely embodies the Dunning Kruger effect. He eschews altruism (and thus compassion) as irrational, and in the process becomes worse than irrational himself: he becomes a deluded fanatic. One simply needs to read objectivist fiction, which is so unrealistic as to be laughable, to see that the notion that objectivism leads to a clear understanding of the world around us is dead wrong.

It is fascinating how you, considering your philosophical views, make such absolute claims about the psychology of Objectivists, while Ayn Rand, an arch-advocate of objective, knowable reality, considered it improper and nonobjective to pass psychological judgment on a person based on his ideas. Here's some relevant quotes.

But yeah, I don't ever expect to see eye to eye with an objectivist. I'm a zeitic, a new model agnostic, which is just about the polar opposite of an objectivist. If you want to continue this conversation (and I'll understand if you don't), I'd start a new thread.

I don't want to continue it that much. Whether I'll let you have the last word depends on what kind of word it would be.