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Feminism is not simple as that. > People ask me sometimes, when — when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my

Feminism is not simple as that. > People ask me sometimes, when — when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine. This is from Justice Ginsburg, and a widely shared quote by a lot of feminist articles. This claim feels pretty vindictive to me and definitely not about equality. In the other words, it is not about REDUCE the inequality, it is about REVERSE the inequality.

mercurysmessage 9y ago
So it's fine if there are nine men in court but not nine women? I don't get your point. Shouldn't it not matter? You are also arguing that one persons opinion represents an entire group.
- nilkn 9y ago
  It's entirely possible for someone to maintain the position that neither of those situations is ideal.
- tanilama 9y ago
  First of all, they are currently 3 women at the supreme court. But ideally, if equal, shouldn't the court, if we assume both gender are equal, split 50:50? If you are advocating for opportunity equality, that is fine with me. But in reality, a lot of companies, as inspected by the media, seems like to hail a 50:50 gender split goal. Those are not compatible with each other.
adventured 9y ago
> Feminism is not simple as that. I never said it was simple and I fully recognize there are countless gradients of all sorts in feminism. I believe it's unnecessary as a concept. Pursuing and agreeing with the concept of equality nullifies feminism - that is my opinion. It's a very unpopular opinion with the left today. I've been having discussions about feminism for two decades online, there is hardly any conversational ground I haven't covered in the process.
- Latty 9y ago
  The definition of feminism is "the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes" - that is fundamentally compatible with equality. You can claim that's not what feminism today is working towards, but that's simply untrue. Feminism hasn't changed to some kind of anti-male conspiracy, despite the ability for people on the internet to find stupid troll posts or the odd extremist saying "all men should be slaves"!
  - adventured 9y ago
    > You can claim that's not what feminism today is working towards, but that's simply untrue. You can claim that's the definition of feminism, I believe what you're saying is untrue. I don't believe what you quoted is the definition of feminism - there are more likely almost as many definitions of feminism as there are feminists. I think it's absurd to claim that there is one definition given the rather elaborate diversity of belief on the matter just among feminists.
    - Latty 9y ago
      I take it you mean "I think what most feminist advocate isn't equality, but sexism against men" - that is not what the predominant message of feminism is today. As I see it, you are taking a vanishingly small minority of comments from extremists/trolls and extrapolating that all feminists believe it. (Edited for more civility).
      - dang 9y ago
        This kind of comment violates the site guidelines no matter how wrong the other person is. Moreover the entire subthread is off-topic as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703722. Please stop.
Latty 9y ago
You are misunderstanding the quote. She's not saying that she wants there to always be nine female members of the SC like it had been with men for so long - rather, the proof of true equality would be when that happened by chance at some point (not sustained), and it wasn't a big deal. That's true equality when it comes to randomness - occasionally it'll be all one gender. If the answer is "half", then that could just be some level of intentional selection of women to reach a quota, which isn't equality. Of course, as with anything, there are a very small number of people who call themselves feminists who are extremists who believe in sexism against men. That is a vanishingly small group, however, and mainstream feminism, even the more fringe wings, want equality, not revenge. Your claim is just misrepresenting the ideology.

mercurysmessage 9y ago

So it's fine if there are nine men in court but not nine women? I don't get your point. Shouldn't it not matter? You are also arguing that one persons opinion represents an entire group.

nilkn 9y ago
It's entirely possible for someone to maintain the position that neither of those situations is ideal.
tanilama 9y ago
First of all, they are currently 3 women at the supreme court. But ideally, if equal, shouldn't the court, if we assume both gender are equal, split 50:50? If you are advocating for opportunity equality, that is fine with me. But in reality, a lot of companies, as inspected by the media, seems like to hail a 50:50 gender split goal. Those are not compatible with each other.

adventured 9y ago

> Feminism is not simple as that. I never said it was simple and I fully recognize there are countless gradients of all sorts in feminism. I believe it's unnecessary as a concept. Pursuing and agreeing with the concept of equality nullifies feminism - that is my opinion. It's a very unpopular opinion with the left today. I've been having discussions about feminism for two decades online, there is hardly any conversational ground I haven't covered in the process.

Latty 9y ago
The definition of feminism is "the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes" - that is fundamentally compatible with equality. You can claim that's not what feminism today is working towards, but that's simply untrue. Feminism hasn't changed to some kind of anti-male conspiracy, despite the ability for people on the internet to find stupid troll posts or the odd extremist saying "all men should be slaves"!
- adventured 9y ago
  > You can claim that's not what feminism today is working towards, but that's simply untrue. You can claim that's the definition of feminism, I believe what you're saying is untrue. I don't believe what you quoted is the definition of feminism - there are more likely almost as many definitions of feminism as there are feminists. I think it's absurd to claim that there is one definition given the rather elaborate diversity of belief on the matter just among feminists.
  - Latty 9y ago
    I take it you mean "I think what most feminist advocate isn't equality, but sexism against men" - that is not what the predominant message of feminism is today. As I see it, you are taking a vanishingly small minority of comments from extremists/trolls and extrapolating that all feminists believe it. (Edited for more civility).
    - dang 9y ago
      This kind of comment violates the site guidelines no matter how wrong the other person is. Moreover the entire subthread is off-topic as described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703722. Please stop.

Latty 9y ago

You are misunderstanding the quote. She's not saying that she wants there to always be nine female members of the SC like it had been with men for so long - rather, the proof of true equality would be when that happened by chance at some point (not sustained), and it wasn't a big deal. That's true equality when it comes to randomness - occasionally it'll be all one gender. If the answer is "half", then that could just be some level of intentional selection of women to reach a quota, which isn't equality. Of course, as with anything, there are a very small number of people who call themselves feminists who are extremists who believe in sexism against men. That is a vanishingly small group, however, and mainstream feminism, even the more fringe wings, want equality, not revenge. Your claim is just misrepresenting the ideology.