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1. I'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right). Many people

by rmc 13y ago

1. I'm basically not allowed to voice an opinion that isn't completely aligned with the feminist status quo (I believe in equality, fuck me right). Many people not involved with feminist groups often think feminists think the same about everything. Which shows they know nothing about actual disagreements within feminists groups. Just look up transexual issues & feminism. That's a big source of disagreement right there.

papsosouid 13y ago
That doesn't mean there isn't a significant amount of mythology that is widely agreed upon in feminist circles. If you expect insane conspiracy theory nonsense like "patriarchy" to actually be supported by evidence rather than accepted on faith, then you are not welcome in feminist discourse, plain and simple.
- icebraining 13y ago
  I'm rather confused by your post. I've never seen the patriarchy described as a "conspiracy", or a willful choice by men to control women, but has a social structure - perpetuated by certain social institutions - that ensure that men as a gender (not every individual, of course) maintain oppressive power over women. Regardless of the existence of the patriarchy as a phenomena - and there are many critics of the theory, from the right and the left -, it makes no sense to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory.
  - papsosouid 13y ago
    >but has a social structure - perpetuated by certain social institutions - that ensure that men as a gender (not every individual, of course) maintain oppressive power over women. What you described is a conspiracy. Of course feminists don't describe their own conspiracy theories as conspiracy theories, they want them to appear legitimate.
    - king_jester 13y ago
      Conspiracy usually means a deliberate attempt of a group to do something rather than something that occurs for systemic or institutional reasons. Ultimately patriarchy as a social force and concept is totally provable has statistical and philosophical evidence that shows it exists. Every basic women's studies or feminist book goes over this to some extent.
      - papsosouid 13y ago
        Institutions do not form spontaneously, and the "systems" you refer to were also created by humans. The notion that men created systems and institutions which oppress women, but it is totally not a conspiracy because they did it by accident is not well represented in feminist academia. >totally provable has statistical and philosophical evidence that shows it exists. Except that alternative explanations are dismissed. If the "evidence" supports many possible conclusions, then it is not proof of a single specific conclusion like "patriarchy".
        king_jester 13y ago
        > Institutions do not form spontaneously, and the "systems" you refer to were also created by humans. The notion that men created systems and institutions which oppress women, but it is totally not a conspiracy because they did it by accident is not well represented in feminist academia. It seems like you are saying that is there is indeed a real conspiracy of institutions created and/or controlled by men, in which case I totally agree. We have well documented cases, historically and in the present, of institutions and systems that are dominated by men. > Except that alternative explanations are dismissed. If the "evidence" supports many possible conclusions, then it is not proof of a single specific conclusion like "patriarchy". I've yet to see convincing alternative explanations. All of the evidence points to existence of patriarchy as a social institution.
        papsosouid 13y ago
        >It seems like you are saying that is there is indeed a real conspiracy of institutions created and/or controlled by men, in which case I totally agree. It seems like you are deliberately choosing to respond with non-sequiturs and strawmen because you don't want to have an honest conversation. >I've yet to see convincing alternative explanations. All of the evidence points to existence of patriarchy as a social institution. Just as creationists view all evidence as pointing to the existence of god. If you start with a conclusion, and twist everything to suit that end, you can't reasonably expect people who didn't start with the same bias to agree with your conclusions.
  - rmc 13y ago
    I've never seen the patriarchy described as a "conspiracy" Anti-feminists would tend to view it as a conspiracy, or no longer existing ("women can vote, so it's all OK now, right?"). Sadly this sort of attitude/meme does exist....
- jb17 13y ago
  Do you really think societal structures that privilege men are a myth? Apart from being quite obvious to anyone who is not extremely biased, there are whole academic branches that study this. I'd say calling that "mythology" puts you into conspiracy theory territory.
  - papsosouid 13y ago
    There have been "whole academic branches" that studied all sorts of nonsense and quackery. That doesn't validate modern feminist mythology any more than it validated phrenology. Rather than resort to weasel words, if you want to take an opposing position than take it. Show me this male created oppression machine.
  - hacker789 13y ago
    > Do you really think societal structures that privilege men are a myth? Nope. And neither are the societal structures that privilege women. Western women have always been among the safest, most privileged human beings on the planet. Predictably, and unfortunately, modern western feminists never compare the plight of the average man with the plight of the average woman when determining who wins the Oppression Olympics; instead, they look jealously toward men at the top of society and declare that because women aren't a part of that, they're more oppressed. And sadly, it gets more ridiculous than that. I've seen people on this forum actually say, with similar words: Institutionalized misandry cannot exist, because most people at the top of society are men. Women don't have the institutional power to oppress men. Any oppression men face is a result of The Patriarchy. Ignoring the fact that oppression can come from outside of congress (university policies, for example), those people are defining patriarchy to simply mean "Oppressive policies written by people with penises, even if feminists support those policies". And that's what makes it dogma.
    - wonderzombie 13y ago
      Ignoring the fact that oppression can come from outside of congress (university policies, for example), those people are defining patriarchy to simply mean "Oppressive policies written by people with penises, even if feminists support those policies". You are of course entitled to your opinion, but I think you'd be better served by engaging with a more nuanced and complex version of these views. What you describe here is caricature. And in all I think it says more about you than feminism. A common refrain in feminist circles is that patriarchy hurts everyone. A good example is parental leave as it applies to men. Paternity leave in the US is absurdly bad, suggesting that we as a society do not value the time a father spends with his child. Along those lines, men are typically graded on a patronizingly terrible curve when it comes to childcare. And so on. Note that these aren't just laws, but societal norms, especially the latter where people praise you for doing basic shit like picking up your kids from work or whatever. If you view patriarchy as an emergent property, then the idea that "laws written by men" are a sufficient description of the concept is just absurd. You could of course take the least coherent out of any group which espouses a belief and engage with that, but that's not an honest way to have a discussion. So like I said maybe don't engage with the most ridiculous possible presentation of feminism.
- rmc 13y ago
  So, because some ideas are widely accepted in feminists theories (the patriarchy) must mean that there is nothing that feminists disagree about?! That's like saying that because there is a significant amount of shared ideas in US politics (e.g.: "US Independence was a good thing"), that US politics is now some sort of group think where dissent is not allowed and everyone thinks the same!
  - papsosouid 13y ago
    >must mean that there is nothing that feminists disagree about?! Nobody made that claim, that is my point. Responding to strawmen is not productive, respond to the actual conversation.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
__--__ 13y ago
"Not all feminists are like that" is an intellectually lazy argument. Of course not all feminists agree. That doesn't matter in the slightest when I have feminists (who I count as friends, no less) telling me that I have no right to have an opinion on gender equality because I'm a white middle class male. "Privilege" and "Patriarchy" is shaming language used by even the meekist feminist (and again, said by people who actually like me) to make me feel bad for being born the way I am - a white male who wants to make a comfortable living. Anytime I make a comment about this topic, the response I get is what I imagine women used to get in Victorian era england; "Aww, that's sweet, now sit down, shut up and let the women talk." I don't oppress women. Women oppress me. And pointing that out makes me the asshole.
gthrowaway 13y ago
Of course "feminism" isn't a unified lockstep movement. But is there a thing, let's call it "pop feminism", which is widespread enough and whose adherents share enough basic ideas and positions, that we can usefully predicate things of it? Absolutely. And, well, that's the problem. For example, when I see people use terms like "patriarchy" in earnest, I tend to grimace a bit. Not because I think they're crazy radical idiots, but because I think they're dangerously behind the times. The concept of unilateral patriarchy (i.e., a system in which most/all advantages based on gender accrue to men while most/all disadvantages based on gender accrue to women) is something like thirty years out of date at this point. We know now that the enemy is gender essentialism, which rigid, constrained roles and systemic advantages/disadvantages emerge from. We also know now that it's not a unidirectional oppression -- the resulting roles have aspects which harm people of all genders, and give at least some advantages to people of all genders. But for every one person who gets this there are a thousand, or more, who just read sites like Jezebel, or feminism-related tags on Tumblr/Facebook, and end up imbibing pop-feminism ideas that are woefully out of touch with what we now actually know about gender in our society. What's worse, those ideas tend to reinforce essentialist gender roles rather than seek to overturn them. The wage gap, currently being argued in the usual stupid way in another front-page thread, is actually a wonderful example of this. Research has shown, time and again, that much of the gap results from women being assigned, by society as a whole, a "childbearer/caregiver" role. And the consequences are clear. Women are more likely to work part-time, women who work full-time work fewer hours and less overtime, women actively seek out "child-friendly" workplaces, women start out with relative earning parity but it falls off a cliff once they have or start thinking about having children, a whole raft of stuff that adds up really really quickly. A real solution to this would be to throw out the essentialism and the notion that child-rearing is "women's work". A real solution would seek to push women out of automatically assuming that bearing and raising children is a vitally important life goal, and would seek to push men out of automatically assuming their role doesn't involve caring for kids. A real solution would question basic ideas about what a successful life looks like and throw out any and all assumptions about "I am of this gender, therefore I should desire that" But pop feminism doesn't do any of that. Instead it assumes that being a woman is mostly identical with wanting to have children and be their primary caregiver. So pop-feminist articles focus on how to "have it all", how to "balance" raising two kids with working 80-hour weeks at a law firm or running your own business, and argue that the important thing is to provide things like on-site day-care and generous maternal-leave policies to ensure women can keep right on performing the same rigid role they've had imposed on them for centuries. What's more, we know these policies really don't work. There are countries which have implemented them, and they still see drastic drop-offs of women's lifetime earnings post-childbirth. What those policies do really well is make it easier to slide back into that role of "raising children is what I'm really supposed to do with my life". But rather than attack the real problem, and ask the real, really hard questions about gender roles and how to overturn them, most people who identify as "feminist" just forward and share and retweet the same old pop-feminism drivel. And if you believe there isn't a relatively large group of people who identify that way and do exactly that, with relative ideological unity in terms of underlying assumptions, then I just don't know what Internet you're spending time on.

by rmc 13y ago

papsosouid 13y ago

That doesn't mean there isn't a significant amount of mythology that is widely agreed upon in feminist circles. If you expect insane conspiracy theory nonsense like "patriarchy" to actually be supported by evidence rather than accepted on faith, then you are not welcome in feminist discourse, plain and simple.

icebraining 13y ago
I'm rather confused by your post. I've never seen the patriarchy described as a "conspiracy", or a willful choice by men to control women, but has a social structure - perpetuated by certain social institutions - that ensure that men as a gender (not every individual, of course) maintain oppressive power over women. Regardless of the existence of the patriarchy as a phenomena - and there are many critics of the theory, from the right and the left -, it makes no sense to dismiss it as a conspiracy theory.
- papsosouid 13y ago
  >but has a social structure - perpetuated by certain social institutions - that ensure that men as a gender (not every individual, of course) maintain oppressive power over women. What you described is a conspiracy. Of course feminists don't describe their own conspiracy theories as conspiracy theories, they want them to appear legitimate.
  - king_jester 13y ago
    Conspiracy usually means a deliberate attempt of a group to do something rather than something that occurs for systemic or institutional reasons. Ultimately patriarchy as a social force and concept is totally provable has statistical and philosophical evidence that shows it exists. Every basic women's studies or feminist book goes over this to some extent.
    - papsosouid 13y ago
      Institutions do not form spontaneously, and the "systems" you refer to were also created by humans. The notion that men created systems and institutions which oppress women, but it is totally not a conspiracy because they did it by accident is not well represented in feminist academia. >totally provable has statistical and philosophical evidence that shows it exists. Except that alternative explanations are dismissed. If the "evidence" supports many possible conclusions, then it is not proof of a single specific conclusion like "patriarchy".
      - king_jester 13y ago
        > Institutions do not form spontaneously, and the "systems" you refer to were also created by humans. The notion that men created systems and institutions which oppress women, but it is totally not a conspiracy because they did it by accident is not well represented in feminist academia. It seems like you are saying that is there is indeed a real conspiracy of institutions created and/or controlled by men, in which case I totally agree. We have well documented cases, historically and in the present, of institutions and systems that are dominated by men. > Except that alternative explanations are dismissed. If the "evidence" supports many possible conclusions, then it is not proof of a single specific conclusion like "patriarchy". I've yet to see convincing alternative explanations. All of the evidence points to existence of patriarchy as a social institution.
        papsosouid 13y ago
        >It seems like you are saying that is there is indeed a real conspiracy of institutions created and/or controlled by men, in which case I totally agree. It seems like you are deliberately choosing to respond with non-sequiturs and strawmen because you don't want to have an honest conversation. >I've yet to see convincing alternative explanations. All of the evidence points to existence of patriarchy as a social institution. Just as creationists view all evidence as pointing to the existence of god. If you start with a conclusion, and twist everything to suit that end, you can't reasonably expect people who didn't start with the same bias to agree with your conclusions.
- rmc 13y ago
  I've never seen the patriarchy described as a "conspiracy" Anti-feminists would tend to view it as a conspiracy, or no longer existing ("women can vote, so it's all OK now, right?"). Sadly this sort of attitude/meme does exist....
jb17 13y ago
Do you really think societal structures that privilege men are a myth? Apart from being quite obvious to anyone who is not extremely biased, there are whole academic branches that study this. I'd say calling that "mythology" puts you into conspiracy theory territory.
- papsosouid 13y ago
  There have been "whole academic branches" that studied all sorts of nonsense and quackery. That doesn't validate modern feminist mythology any more than it validated phrenology. Rather than resort to weasel words, if you want to take an opposing position than take it. Show me this male created oppression machine.
- hacker789 13y ago
  > Do you really think societal structures that privilege men are a myth? Nope. And neither are the societal structures that privilege women. Western women have always been among the safest, most privileged human beings on the planet. Predictably, and unfortunately, modern western feminists never compare the plight of the average man with the plight of the average woman when determining who wins the Oppression Olympics; instead, they look jealously toward men at the top of society and declare that because women aren't a part of that, they're more oppressed. And sadly, it gets more ridiculous than that. I've seen people on this forum actually say, with similar words: Institutionalized misandry cannot exist, because most people at the top of society are men. Women don't have the institutional power to oppress men. Any oppression men face is a result of The Patriarchy. Ignoring the fact that oppression can come from outside of congress (university policies, for example), those people are defining patriarchy to simply mean "Oppressive policies written by people with penises, even if feminists support those policies". And that's what makes it dogma.
  - wonderzombie 13y ago
    Ignoring the fact that oppression can come from outside of congress (university policies, for example), those people are defining patriarchy to simply mean "Oppressive policies written by people with penises, even if feminists support those policies". You are of course entitled to your opinion, but I think you'd be better served by engaging with a more nuanced and complex version of these views. What you describe here is caricature. And in all I think it says more about you than feminism. A common refrain in feminist circles is that patriarchy hurts everyone. A good example is parental leave as it applies to men. Paternity leave in the US is absurdly bad, suggesting that we as a society do not value the time a father spends with his child. Along those lines, men are typically graded on a patronizingly terrible curve when it comes to childcare. And so on. Note that these aren't just laws, but societal norms, especially the latter where people praise you for doing basic shit like picking up your kids from work or whatever. If you view patriarchy as an emergent property, then the idea that "laws written by men" are a sufficient description of the concept is just absurd. You could of course take the least coherent out of any group which espouses a belief and engage with that, but that's not an honest way to have a discussion. So like I said maybe don't engage with the most ridiculous possible presentation of feminism.
rmc 13y ago
So, because some ideas are widely accepted in feminists theories (the patriarchy) must mean that there is nothing that feminists disagree about?! That's like saying that because there is a significant amount of shared ideas in US politics (e.g.: "US Independence was a good thing"), that US politics is now some sort of group think where dissent is not allowed and everyone thinks the same!
- papsosouid 13y ago
  >must mean that there is nothing that feminists disagree about?! Nobody made that claim, that is my point. Responding to strawmen is not productive, respond to the actual conversation.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

__--__ 13y ago

"Not all feminists are like that" is an intellectually lazy argument. Of course not all feminists agree. That doesn't matter in the slightest when I have feminists (who I count as friends, no less) telling me that I have no right to have an opinion on gender equality because I'm a white middle class male. "Privilege" and "Patriarchy" is shaming language used by even the meekist feminist (and again, said by people who actually like me) to make me feel bad for being born the way I am - a white male who wants to make a comfortable living. Anytime I make a comment about this topic, the response I get is what I imagine women used to get in Victorian era england; "Aww, that's sweet, now sit down, shut up and let the women talk." I don't oppress women. Women oppress me. And pointing that out makes me the asshole.

gthrowaway 13y ago

Of course "feminism" isn't a unified lockstep movement. But is there a thing, let's call it "pop feminism", which is widespread enough and whose adherents share enough basic ideas and positions, that we can usefully predicate things of it? Absolutely. And, well, that's the problem. For example, when I see people use terms like "patriarchy" in earnest, I tend to grimace a bit. Not because I think they're crazy radical idiots, but because I think they're dangerously behind the times. The concept of unilateral patriarchy (i.e., a system in which most/all advantages based on gender accrue to men while most/all disadvantages based on gender accrue to women) is something like thirty years out of date at this point. We know now that the enemy is gender essentialism, which rigid, constrained roles and systemic advantages/disadvantages emerge from. We also know now that it's not a unidirectional oppression -- the resulting roles have aspects which harm people of all genders, and give at least some advantages to people of all genders. But for every one person who gets this there are a thousand, or more, who just read sites like Jezebel, or feminism-related tags on Tumblr/Facebook, and end up imbibing pop-feminism ideas that are woefully out of touch with what we now actually know about gender in our society. What's worse, those ideas tend to reinforce essentialist gender roles rather than seek to overturn them. The wage gap, currently being argued in the usual stupid way in another front-page thread, is actually a wonderful example of this. Research has shown, time and again, that much of the gap results from women being assigned, by society as a whole, a "childbearer/caregiver" role. And the consequences are clear. Women are more likely to work part-time, women who work full-time work fewer hours and less overtime, women actively seek out "child-friendly" workplaces, women start out with relative earning parity but it falls off a cliff once they have or start thinking about having children, a whole raft of stuff that adds up really really quickly. A real solution to this would be to throw out the essentialism and the notion that child-rearing is "women's work". A real solution would seek to push women out of automatically assuming that bearing and raising children is a vitally important life goal, and would seek to push men out of automatically assuming their role doesn't involve caring for kids. A real solution would question basic ideas about what a successful life looks like and throw out any and all assumptions about "I am of this gender, therefore I should desire that" But pop feminism doesn't do any of that. Instead it assumes that being a woman is mostly identical with wanting to have children and be their primary caregiver. So pop-feminist articles focus on how to "have it all", how to "balance" raising two kids with working 80-hour weeks at a law firm or running your own business, and argue that the important thing is to provide things like on-site day-care and generous maternal-leave policies to ensure women can keep right on performing the same rigid role they've had imposed on them for centuries. What's more, we know these policies really don't work. There are countries which have implemented them, and they still see drastic drop-offs of women's lifetime earnings post-childbirth. What those policies do really well is make it easier to slide back into that role of "raising children is what I'm really supposed to do with my life". But rather than attack the real problem, and ask the real, really hard questions about gender roles and how to overturn them, most people who identify as "feminist" just forward and share and retweet the same old pop-feminism drivel. And if you believe there isn't a relatively large group of people who identify that way and do exactly that, with relative ideological unity in terms of underlying assumptions, then I just don't know what Internet you're spending time on.