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Failings of feminism II - femininity is bad?


Lyanna Stark

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In the last thread we dealt with if feminism fails if people who claim to be feminists do not inform other people enough, and what good, if any, feminism has done especially in the Western world.

One thing that really made me hope the discussion could be continued was something that karaddin started discussion in the post here:

The argument that I believe Julia Serano goes on to make from there is that while feminists have been relatively successful in empowering women, it has failed to empower femininity. Whether it is by a deliberate choice to throw femininity under the bus and embrace masculine behaviour as a means to gain accept, or just as an oversight in methodology, or even a deliberate choice that we can't empower femininity yet, that's a fight for a more equal time I still think that counts as a failure of feminism on some level.

More posts on the topic by Seli here concerning "strong women" in fiction and femininity. Posts by Eefa, Min and more on traditional femininity in today's society.

I also thought that Terra's and sologdin's discussion on how femininity vs masculinity are valued is interesting.

Previously I've seen discussions on how the devaluation of femininity is partly the fault of second wave feminists, and perhaps there is something there, but are they the main culprit? It seems to me that the devaluation of femininity is far more general and not mainly found with second wave feminists.

I mean, it's not a very simple topic to get a good grasp on. I freely admit to feeling quite suspicious of those women of my age who claim being a SAHM, raising children, obsessing over home decorating and getting ultra-traditional hobbies is the bees knees. It makes me want to send them a copy of "The Feminine Mystique" and then run very far in the opposite direction.

On the other hand, I enjoy crushing people's prejudice that women in IT should be mannish and uninterested in colourful clothing, high heels or pink nail polish.

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What I personally find frustrating about feminism or at least what I have seen about it, is that they seem very contradictory on what they actually want. The most common one I see is the idea that saying a woman is beautiful is objectification, whereas finding one unattractive is holding them up to unrealistic standards of beauty. This comes up a lot with my very feminist minded friend (though I don't know that she actually identifies as a feminist.). Now obviously when I find a woman attractive I don't take the trouble to say "I find that woman attractive however I respect her as a person and would like to get to know her better and like her for her personality" even if that is what I'm thinking. It seems that here Feminists are simply failing to grasp the semantics of what is being said, and jumping to conclusions about what the person meant just because they did not explicitly explain every facet of their opinion.

Just one of my gripes with feminism. I guess I'll get round to posting more.

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Well, it is true that some feminists have fallen for the trap of masculinity and present a ''strong'' woman as a ''masculine'' one, or at least having masculine characteristics - being strong, working fulltime and taking care of the children, being able to fix your car yourself, confront rather than compromise etc. The examples are numerous. They present a ''strong'' woman as one who adopts masculine characteristics and do not care to investigate the actual construction of masculine and feminine notions themselves. They are feminists who put a negative thing on ''feminine'' just like some men do. This is something what postmodernists do research after, how ''feminine'' and ''masculine'' are actually constructed and what it means for day-to-day life. I mean, is being able to fix your car really masculine? Is compromising really something ''what women do'' rather than what men also do or want? Why is compromising rather than confronting seen as bad by many people? It's quite interesting, actually.

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Well, it is true that some feminists have fallen for the trap of masculinity and present a ''strong'' woman as a ''masculine'' one, or at least having masculine characteristics - being strong, working fulltime and taking care of the children, being able to fix your car yourself, confront rather than compromise etc. The examples are numerous.

Well firstly, taking care of children is hardly traditionally masculine. (Neither is working and taking care of children, that was normally the domain of working class women).

And the numerous examples are sort of what I am after. Since you mention them, do you have any of feminists stating this? I have no actually personally read feminist works published lately where this has been the case.The last essay I read on it was published around mid 90s.

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Well firstly, taking care of children is hardly traditionally masculine. (Neither is working and taking care of children, that was normally the domain of working class women).

And the numerous examples are sort of what I am after. Since you mention them, do you have any of feminists stating this? I have no actually personally read feminist works published lately where this has been the case.The last essay I read on it was published around mid 90s.

But is taking care of children essentially feminine, then? Shouldn't it be actually considered as something human rather than feminine or masculine? ;)

I don't have articles explicitly stating such things, but it is definitely true that some feminists depict a strong woman as a women with masculine characteristics. Maybe not that recent, but they were there. I could perhaps search for it in some databases, if there was ever research done after this thing..

Some advertisements are doing this as well. Or articles in magazines and journals; featuring a coverstory about a women who does a ''masculinist'' job. It's very interesting to do research after construction of specific notions. I only got recently interested in this kind of things, after I had a course about theories as Realism, Structuralism, Feminism, Green Theories and Social Constructivism for example.

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The disdain for femininity is a real thing, but I think that more feminists are starting to recognise this as a problem and start addressing it. Of course it's a much wider issue than just something that the second-wavers came up with - femininity has been viewed as "lesser" for centuries, by everyone - and I can't entirely blame the second wave for trying to take the short-cut to equality by taking the symptomatic approach (eradicate girly things and we will all be equal!) rather than a more fundamental one. But, it's clear that, while this has made plenty of gains in allowing women to act more "masculine" and get away with it, it's a long way from being a complete or adequate solution if it excludes a whole swathe of behaviour from both sexes.

I spent at least the first two decades of my life explicitly rejecting anything vaguely "feminine"; an unfortunate but sorta inevitable side-effect of being brought up on tomboy princesses and the like. A lot of stuff can look superficially feminist in this way (I'm talking cultural stuffs like badass battlechicks and whatnot, rather than academic feminism) but still leads into the "girls = crap" narrative. Just for example, people used to say things like "you think like a man!" and "you're not like those girly girls" and I'd take it as a compliment... :bang: - sure, it was intended as a compliment, and that's a large part of the problem. Man Stuff is still a general shorthand for Good; Girl Stuff (even for girls) is still too often used as an insult. And this is why we need to keep chipping away at matters of language and book-characters and so on, which look relatively inconsequential, because this shit frames the way we think and just reinforces the badness.

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Well firstly, taking care of children is hardly traditionally masculine. (Neither is working and taking care of children, that was normally the domain of working class women).

And the numerous examples are sort of what I am after. Since you mention them, do you have any of feminists stating this? I have no actually personally read feminist works published lately where this has been the case.The last essay I read on it was published around mid 90s.

Taking care of your family at least financially -and from physical danger-seems very masculine to me. The idea that men should handle business seems very ingrained.

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Min,

The "only men do dangerous jobs" is a very peculiar canard for so many reasons, including the ones larrytheimp points out. Firstly, CEO of a major corporation is not exactly high on the hazard scale, and same with a good many professions where women are underrepresented. Secondly, you'd think they'd be all in favour of sharing this danger with women by broadening the recruitment to both sexes, which is a thing that feminists are working to enable. I can only conclude that "some men do dangerous jobs" is just an way of saying "...therefore ALL men are deserving of higher salaries in general" rather than an actual counter to any specific part of feminism

I think you have it wrong. First, the "only men do all the dangerous jobs" bit is not a justification that all men deserve higher pay. Instead, i think, it attempts to explain away part of the pay gap. After all, a male-dominated profession like deep sea fishing is very lucrative but dangerous; a female-dominated profession like teaching is low-paying and safe (school shootings excepted). I suspect, but am not sure, that these dangerous jobs do not exist in large enough numbers to cause a material gap in the average pay of men and men.

Second, the "only men do dangerous jobs" bit is also a critique on feminists who only focus on the need for women to fill the ranks of prestigious positions. I suspect there are quite a few barriers to entry for women in certain professions like fishing, logging, construction, trucking, etc. Nonetheless, you don't see many feminists, if any, calling for those glass ceilings to be shattered.

Not that any of this justifies unequal pay. It certainly doesn't, but your conclusion is false, IMO.

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I suspect there are quite a few barriers to entry for women in certain professions like fishing, logging, construction, trucking, etc. Nonetheless, you don't see many feminists, if any, calling for those glass ceilings to be shattered.

Combat? I'd say we've seen quite a large push for an end to that ceiling. And there are plenty of organisations trying to increase female participation in those careers; maybe you've not seen them because they're not aimed at you?

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But is taking care of children essentially feminine, then? Shouldn't it be actually considered as something human rather than feminine or masculine? ;)

Child rearing is definitely seen as traditionally feminine, yes.

I don't have articles explicitly stating such things, but it is definitely true that some feminists depict a strong woman as a women with masculine characteristics. Maybe not that recent, but they were there. I could perhaps search for it in some databases, if there was ever research done after this thing..

Having a reference for it would certainly be interesting, since I have not personally come across it for a good 15 years, and not from what I would consider Third Wave feminists in general (not that I know all of them or even half of them by a long shot).

Some advertisements are doing this as well. Or articles in magazines and journals; featuring a coverstory about a women who does a ''masculinist'' job. It's very interesting to do research after construction of specific notions. I only got recently interested in this kind of things, after I had a course about theories as Realism, Structuralism, Feminism, Green Theories and Social Constructivism for example.

I am not sure how you mean, unless you mean that women in more traditionally masculine jobs are valued higher. I'm not sure this is always the case as I have got a fair few negative comments by other women since I work in IT. Stuff like "LOL nerd", "Get a less embarrassing hobby" and "I hate my husband's gaming, computers are evil" (I was totally stumped by that one, btw.) Maybe it's just my line of work tho.

Lyanna,

Anyone who thinks my wife is "weak" because she likes to knit and has chosen to stay home with our kids is a flippin idiot.

Well, I hate to knit and I suck at it. ;) But I like baking bread almost as much as I like computer games.

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Sci mentioned in the last thread that he was curious about Warren Farrell. So I thought I'd give you

It's him on the wage gap, he got some points but at the same time if kind of feels like he didn't think some of these things all the way through.

Example, women choose on average to work less hours, okay but there's a lot more to it to that. Why do women work less hours? What influence them to work less, or men to work more?

There's a lot more in the video than that but I don't feel like re-watching it.

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Lyanna - First off thanks for your kind words last thread, I like sharing my experience which is why I feel like I'm shouting it from the rooftops on here :P Also thanks for picking up on the point I tried to raise, I wanted to see the discussion cover new ground for once instead of just having to have the same old tired argument with people think equality is achieved, the feminist army should disband!

Some of the stuff that Min brought up really highlights why I was so certain that femininity is viewed as inferior, because I've had plenty of exposure (and thought it myself) to some of that stuff about "oh this girl is fun, she's not like the silly girly girls", or one that I probably take a bit more issue with "this chick is awesome, she'll go to strip bars with us". That said I think there is a mix of some things that are genuinely feminine as being seen as inferior or weak, and some things that have arbitrarily been assigned as masculine or feminine by society. Stuff like being able to fix your car, or look after your kids should be neither - they are just parts of being human unrelated to gender. I happen to think being good at looking after your kids is much more important than being able to fix a car, but maybe I'm bias because I know I can look after a kid, but I'd be fucked if I needed to fix a car :P

The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the part about oppositional sexism is correct. There is no reason that masculine and feminine need to be opposite, they are merely different and complimentary. While it is thought of as opposite there are going to continue to be things where feminine is a negative, because there is a masculine equivalent attribute that is a positive.

That said there are definitely things viewed as feminine that I think society views as neutral at best, and probably a negative that I think are absolutely a huge positive and if we could teach men to embrace it we would be a lot better off. Huge example, ability to examine, understand and talk about your feelings rather than just going with anger. I think attitudes on this are changing, and younger men tend to do better at understanding their emotions than older men, but there is still a long way to go.

Finally one other thing I forgot to address in the last thread. Whenever the differences between sexes come up, people always want to say men are stronger but concede that there are women that can be that strong too. Well there is a flip side of that that is often forgotten. Some men are weak as shit, I know because I was one. Without doing any exercise that would increase strength (or really of any kind at all) my female cousin (the same one in my earlier anecdote about pay) was always far stronger than me. Her hands were stronger than mine, if we needed a jar opened we would go to her, her arms were stronger than mine and she would carry the heavy stuff when moving etc. It wasn't even close, she was much stronger than me. Similar thing with my new flatmate, although she is much smaller and she does exercise, however the slightest amount of exercise and her arms bulk up. A day of push ups etc would give her more muscle tone than 2 weeks would for me. Yeah it's not common, but it's not super rare either, there are plenty of men who are not physically that strong.

Of course that has now turned into a positive for me, as soon as I started my transition I didn't have to wait for any hormone changes to have awesome chick arms and legs, I already had them ;)

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Combat? I'd say we've seen quite a large push for an end to that ceiling. And there are plenty of organisations trying to increase female participation in those careers; maybe you've not seen them because they're not aimed at you?

It's entirely possible as I am not very familiar with those industries.

Still when asked about inequality today, what do we usually see as evidence provided by feminists? We see statistics showing just how many (few) elected government officials, partners in law firms, CEOs in Fortune 500 companies, etc, are women. Would you agree at least that there is a very heavy bias in favor of filling these powerful positions with women? Presumably, the thought process behind such bias is that the patriarchy can be undermined or undone once women fill more of these power positions. It just seems that certain less desirable positions are, at best, an afterthought to women despite the huge gender imbalances and probable gender bias within certain industries.

Combat roles.are obviously dangerous but I think shattering that glass ceiling was more symbolic than anything. I don't expect that we will see women flooding infantry ranks.

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Second, the "only men do dangerous jobs" bit is also a critique on feminists who only focus on the need for women to fill the ranks of prestigious positions. I suspect there are quite a few barriers to entry for women in certain professions like fishing, logging, construction, trucking, etc. Nonetheless, you don't see many feminists, if any, calling for those glass ceilings to be shattered.

Uh, gee, not only is there the "women in combat" issue, but I have heard prominent feminists such as Gloria Steinem talking about the need for there to be more women among police and firefighters for years. Those are certainly dangerous jobs -- I bet a lot more dangerous than trucking.

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It is a tricky question, and keep in mind I am only looking in from the outside basing ideas on third-hand information at best.

Some of the disdain as already mentioned seems to come from decades of women who wanted to function in the male dominated aspects of society having to use mimicry to get bye and stay unnoticed. But I would imagine part stems from the related tradition that women had to accentuate their femininity to be accepted in male dominated aspects of society. Add to that that a part of what is perceived as feminine (or masculine for that matter) is almost a mandatory cultural maker.

All those factors would probably be involved in why femininity is/was to some extent suspect. Its whole definition and contrast to masculinity is a tool to control social behaviour (an issue of course not limited to femininity alone).

Accepting freedom from these social norms, as well as freedom to act within these norms because people feel like it will probably a sign of a more equal society.

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The dangerous jobs argument seems to me to be an excursion out of the mainstream. Sure there are dangerous jobs but they are hardly typical of employment in the developed world and one historic feature of the developed world is that women were removed historically from occupations like mining in the UK early in the 19th century precisely because of the developing notion that women (and children) were intrinsically weak and gentle and that pit ponies should be used to do their work instead.

Anyhow the dangerousness of jobs is not necessarily intrinsic - look at the variation world wide for deaths at work. How dangerous certain jobs are allowed to be is a political and social choice (consciously made or not). Jobs can be designed to be safer through the appropriate training, use of equipment and safety standards. It's not a case that a certain job can only be dangerous and only the roughest and the toughest can do them for ever. Since even if this was the case we'd be talking about a minority of jobs in economies as a whole we can hardly justify a man earning more for his office job than a woman doing the same work because other men are doing dangerous work somewhere out in the wilds.

I've come across the argument before that men tend to earn more because they ask more often for raises and maybe ask for more money too. OK we can see how that reflects cultural values that men are meant to be more assertive and women more demure, but equally it's a question of organisational culture. You can have pay scales with negotiated supplements or bonuses for special circumstances - but again this is likely to be the kind of thing you find in societies with either a healthy collective bargaining tradition and not every man for himself or a contentious bureaucratic tradition (I'm always mystified why people dislike bureaucracy, doesn't inconsistency and the opportunities for favouritism, game playing and politicking annoy people, but never mind).

ETA I like baking more than computer games. All that kneading and gobbling down oven fresh bread smeared with butter.

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Uh, gee, not only is there the "women in combat" issue, but I have heard prominent feminists such as Gloria Steinem talking about the need for there to be more women among police and firefighters for years. Those are certainly dangerous jobs -- I bet a lot more dangerous than trucking.

No doubt. I think stating that "only" men work dangerous jobs (a very vague term) is flat out wrong and disrespectful to the many women who do risk their lives to perform their job.

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