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I use to think this way myself - I'd like to explain how my thinking has changed (sans pitchforks) to the best of my ability. My understanding is that "feminis

I use to think this way myself - I'd like to explain how my thinking has changed (sans pitchforks) to the best of my ability. My understanding is that "feminism" doesn't imply more rights for females, but rather highlights where they believe inequalities lie. Same reason people have adopted the phrase "Intersectional Feminist" so as to draw attention to where equality (even among women) is lacking - to those of color or less economic privilege. Just like saying "Black Lives Matter" doesn't imply that African Americans lives matter more than others, you are using specific words to focus the application of a general idea (lives matter, equality is good, etc.) to a where you may think it is lacking.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
There's a problem with this. Imagine you take group A, and you find every spot where they fall behind group B. And you manage, through whatever, means to rectify this. In the end you have not created equality, but almost certainly made group A vastly superior to group B, as you ignore the spots where group A was already ahead. To take things out of the abstract, consider 'women in STEM'. In college girls do not enroll in STEM with anywhere near the rate boys do. And this receives immense media attention and coverage. However, there has been a sharp and increasing imbalance in girls:boys in college enrollment as a whole. In 1979 they became the majority. And the share of that majority has constantly increased. We're starting to push towards girls outnumbering boys in college by 2:1. And some education is, in general, leagues ahead of none. Yet this receives next to no media attention. And when it's mentioned the person is immediately pegged as some sort of a bigot or extremist as the connotation implied by labels such as men's rights activists. And for what it's worth, I don't think there should be focus on this, but neither do I think there should be a focus on getting any gender/race/group/age or whatever into anything. I am an egalitarian and I think we should focus exclusively on providing equal opportunity so much as possible, but without pushing people into things. Norway is arguably the most gender-equal nation in this world, and one of their findings was when they directed girls towards fields girls did not regularly participate in, there was a mild but constant increase. Practically as soon as that push was relinquished, the numbers diminished to 'pre-push' times. On a smaller scale, like a good egalitarian I also pushed my wife into pursuing computer science over her previous interest in sociology during university. She excelled, as did I. Now years after that when we both have really our choice of whatever we want to do, she works with people -- and I work with code. I have no regrets bringing her into computer science, but it does make one wonder if it was truly the best decision. People are pliable enough that you can fit square pegs into round holes, but we also tend to be like sponges and after all that contorting that square peg contorted to fit into that round hole is eventually going to go back to being a square because that's what it wants to be. [1] - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_303.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_303.10.a...
headmelted 8y ago
I see your point, but if I may nitpick: The phrase "Black Lives Matter" is Ronseal. Which is to say that "it does what it says on the tin" - in the sense that the phrase exactly explains what you're campaigning for - equal consideration and rights for black lives. The phrase "feminism" implies female rights, and (at least linguistically) nothing more. Now, it may be that feminists and non-feminists don't see the phrase as meaning that, which I understand to be your point, but I think that's where this becomes much more nuanced. Anecdotally I have known self-described feminists who were very much about equal rights - but I have also encountered several (admittedly fewer) who were openly pro-female and anti-male. Edit: removed anecdotal stories as they're just that: anecdotal. I think there's a bigger discussion to be had here for all of us, and I really hope getting confronted with stories like this has the silver lining of bringing it about.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

There's a problem with this. Imagine you take group A, and you find every spot where they fall behind group B. And you manage, through whatever, means to rectify this. In the end you have not created equality, but almost certainly made group A vastly superior to group B, as you ignore the spots where group A was already ahead. To take things out of the abstract, consider 'women in STEM'. In college girls do not enroll in STEM with anywhere near the rate boys do. And this receives immense media attention and coverage. However, there has been a sharp and increasing imbalance in girls:boys in college enrollment as a whole. In 1979 they became the majority. And the share of that majority has constantly increased. We're starting to push towards girls outnumbering boys in college by 2:1. And some education is, in general, leagues ahead of none. Yet this receives next to no media attention. And when it's mentioned the person is immediately pegged as some sort of a bigot or extremist as the connotation implied by labels such as men's rights activists. And for what it's worth, I don't think there should be focus on this, but neither do I think there should be a focus on getting any gender/race/group/age or whatever into anything. I am an egalitarian and I think we should focus exclusively on providing equal opportunity so much as possible, but without pushing people into things. Norway is arguably the most gender-equal nation in this world, and one of their findings was when they directed girls towards fields girls did not regularly participate in, there was a mild but constant increase. Practically as soon as that push was relinquished, the numbers diminished to 'pre-push' times. On a smaller scale, like a good egalitarian I also pushed my wife into pursuing computer science over her previous interest in sociology during university. She excelled, as did I. Now years after that when we both have really our choice of whatever we want to do, she works with people -- and I work with code. I have no regrets bringing her into computer science, but it does make one wonder if it was truly the best decision. People are pliable enough that you can fit square pegs into round holes, but we also tend to be like sponges and after all that contorting that square peg contorted to fit into that round hole is eventually going to go back to being a square because that's what it wants to be. [1] - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_303.10.asp https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d13/tables/dt13_303.10.a...

headmelted 8y ago

I see your point, but if I may nitpick: The phrase "Black Lives Matter" is Ronseal. Which is to say that "it does what it says on the tin" - in the sense that the phrase exactly explains what you're campaigning for - equal consideration and rights for black lives. The phrase "feminism" implies female rights, and (at least linguistically) nothing more. Now, it may be that feminists and non-feminists don't see the phrase as meaning that, which I understand to be your point, but I think that's where this becomes much more nuanced. Anecdotally I have known self-described feminists who were very much about equal rights - but I have also encountered several (admittedly fewer) who were openly pro-female and anti-male. Edit: removed anecdotal stories as they're just that: anecdotal. I think there's a bigger discussion to be had here for all of us, and I really hope getting confronted with stories like this has the silver lining of bringing it about.