14 ms·

Great comment. If anyone would like to learn more about feminism, I can't recommend highly enough the book "Feminism is for Everybody" by bell hooks. I find a l

by thenmar 13y ago

Great comment. If anyone would like to learn more about feminism, I can't recommend highly enough the book "Feminism is for Everybody" by bell hooks. I find a lot of commenters here and on other sites form (strong!) opinions about feminism and sexism despite not understanding basic concepts like privilege, oppression, and intersectionality. That book is an accessible primer on those topics.

dclowd9901 13y ago
Where I really crossed the threshold into understanding Feminism was in a class I took in college (as trite as it sounds). We were discussing gender-specific organizations, not unlike the one in this post, when someone asked why it's OK for women to have a conference, but if men did, people would flip. The teacher gave a long-winded answer, but what really stuck with me most was a single statement: "Because every other organization is already a men's organization." YMMV.
- obstacle1 13y ago
  Sorry, are you saying that statement made you understand as in the statement is an explanation of some essential point of feminism? Or are you saying that statement made you understand that feminism often (not always!) has a tenuous grasp on reality, tends to make baseless or meaningless statements, and is purely ideological much of the time? Because that statement -- which btw is the standard "I don't want to have to argue with you" brush-off used by campus feminists everywhere -- means nothing. Every other organization is already a men's organization? Really? In what sense could they possibly mean that? What assumptions must they be making for that to hold true? By virtue of the fact that they're on a university campus, they're part of an organization consisting of well over 1/2 women [1]. Men are a minority on most campuses in the states. So does the university as a whole qualify as a "men's organization"? If not, why is a "women's organization" necessary on campus? If there's no need to be 'shielded' from a broader, all-encompassing men's organization constituted by the university, it seems that a men's organization is just as justified as a women's organization in that environment. [1] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/02/16/the-male-female-ratio-in-college/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/02/16/the-male-female-...
  - detcader 13y ago
    It seems you need a bit more than dclowd9901. Perhaps "White Privilege and Male Privilege" by Peggy McIntosh and "Oppression" by Marilyn Frye are good places to start: http://www.iub.edu/~tchsotl/part2/McIntosh%20White%20Privilege.pdf http://www.iub.edu/~tchsotl/part2/McIntosh%20White%20Privile... http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Frye,%20Oppression.pdf http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Frye,%20Oppression...
    - obstacle1 13y ago
      I graduated from a feminist-oriented humanities department where I engaged with these issues critically for a long time. Rather than linking me polemics from 1988 that don't address my point, consider that I disagree with the fundamental positions on a logical basis. If you'd like to engage the points I actually made in my post, feel free.
      - detcader 13y ago
        So what you're saying is, you won't read either essay.
        obstacle1 13y ago
        What I'm saying is explicitly written down in the posts I've made. If you're willing to engage the points I'm actually making, I'll have a discussion with you. If you're just going to throw broad-reaching polemical feminism 101 articles at very specific points, I'm not going to take you seriously. You didn't even state why you think those articles apply to the (again, very specific) point I made.
        detcader 13y ago
        I thought it would be obvious by just reading the articles. Even in environments where there are a bit more women than men, men still have male privilege (as McIntosh describes it), women are still under oppression (as Frye describes it). Women still fear rape and all other male violence on college campuses, for example. "Majority" makes no difference when it comes to power structures; look at "the 1%" in the US..
- tomp 13y ago
  I'd really like to ask your teacher which organizations, exactly, did (s)he mean. My experience is limited, obviously, and I'm not from the US, but I've only rarely seen an organization with only male members, and even most of these have welcomed women who wanted to join.
  - mtrimpe 13y ago
    The average board meeting would be a good example of such an organization.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  In the end it boils down to the problem that it's very hard to explain the mechanics of culture to people who have little to gain from changing it. When you've pulled the short straw in your culture, whether it's due to race, sex, orientation or something else, you have a lot of incentive to attempt to change culture and you logically end up spending a lot of energy on learning the intricacies of culture and cultural change. If you're in the priviliged group however there's very little incentive to pay attention to these issues at all, since effecting cultural change would have little personal benefit. A byproduct of those systemic forces is that it makes discussions between those two sides very difficult; quite like how discussing technical topics in politics is very hard.
claudius 13y ago
The problem with ‘feminism’ is that it is essentially worthless as a label to denote a political ideology – sure, there are some people who call themselves ‘feminist’ who have perfectly respectable views, but there are also a bunch of people calling themselves ‘feminists’ who are worse sexists than anybody else. Sure, equal rights and all such things are good and proper aims, but ‘cutting off penises’ is not. Certainly there is a lack of women in some fields and one should attempt to help balance gender distributions. Surely nobody should feel ashamed for reporting an (even attempted) rape regardless of the way they dress. Of course, if strong independent women want to sell sex for money, they should be allowed to – oh, wait, one of the leading feminists (Alice Schwarzer) is strongly opposing any legalisation of prostitution and you will find people who call themselves feminists opposing any of the previously-mentioned targets as well. I like to think that ‘communism’ as a label has much the same problems – surely ‘people should have equal incomes’ is a somewhat acceptable (not necessarily agreeable) opinion, and calling yourself a communist possibly justified. But what is the relation between the ‘communist’ label here and the ‘communist’ label of the people who built a wall around their country (GDR) or killed all intellectuals (Burma)? Is there no word that one can use to describe the ‘sensible’ (equal rights, balancing of gender distributions etc.) feminism? Put another way, if I happen to come across someone who calls them-self a ‘feminist’ online, does that actually tell me anything about them?
- MartinCron 13y ago
  Is there any label that people apply to themselves or others that successfully filters out the lunatic fringe from reasonable people? I'm not afraid to call myself a feminist (even though that puts me in the same camp as some crazy people) in the same way that I'm not afraid to call myself a hacker or a man or a parent or an urban farmer.
  - claudius 13y ago
    > Is there any label that people apply to themselves or others that successfully filters out the lunatic fringe from reasonable people? I don’t know, it probably has to do with the visibility of these fringe groups and your position in the spectrum described by the label. I am sure there are lunatic social democrats somewhere, I have just not yet met them, and I am also positive that there are lunatic liberal democrats somewhere, but again I have not yet met them. OTOH, there certainly are lunatic ‘scientists’, but they take a sufficiently small stage in public that I can self-identify as a scientist without having to worry about being confused with them. > I'm not afraid to call myself a feminist (even though that puts me in the same camp as some crazy people) in the same way that I'm not afraid to call myself a hacker or a man or a parent or an urban farmer. Even if I was a hacker (I really am not, just an interested guy), I would hesitate to call myself a hacker in front of an audience that associates the word mostly with their CC details being stolen. Language is difficult.
xixi77 13y ago
I have a very high opinion about feminism (and absolutely agree with the top comment on all points; events like this are great and necessary), but this high opinion is not at all shared with concepts like privilege, oppression, and intersectionality. And I particularly don't like how people who treat feminism as some kind of a subset of a broader "social justice" movement (and whose keywords you just mentioned) are imposing a very particular interpretation of feminism.
therogerwilco 13y ago
This is like feminism. Once I had a feminist say it was about equality for women AND men. I said, "would you like to join an organization called 'maleism'? It's for the equal treatment of men AND women."

by thenmar 13y ago

dclowd9901 13y ago

Where I really crossed the threshold into understanding Feminism was in a class I took in college (as trite as it sounds). We were discussing gender-specific organizations, not unlike the one in this post, when someone asked why it's OK for women to have a conference, but if men did, people would flip. The teacher gave a long-winded answer, but what really stuck with me most was a single statement: "Because every other organization is already a men's organization." YMMV.

obstacle1 13y ago
Sorry, are you saying that statement made you understand as in the statement is an explanation of some essential point of feminism? Or are you saying that statement made you understand that feminism often (not always!) has a tenuous grasp on reality, tends to make baseless or meaningless statements, and is purely ideological much of the time? Because that statement -- which btw is the standard "I don't want to have to argue with you" brush-off used by campus feminists everywhere -- means nothing. Every other organization is already a men's organization? Really? In what sense could they possibly mean that? What assumptions must they be making for that to hold true? By virtue of the fact that they're on a university campus, they're part of an organization consisting of well over 1/2 women [1]. Men are a minority on most campuses in the states. So does the university as a whole qualify as a "men's organization"? If not, why is a "women's organization" necessary on campus? If there's no need to be 'shielded' from a broader, all-encompassing men's organization constituted by the university, it seems that a men's organization is just as justified as a women's organization in that environment. [1] - http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/02/16/the-male-female-ratio-in-college/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ccap/2012/02/16/the-male-female-...
- detcader 13y ago
  It seems you need a bit more than dclowd9901. Perhaps "White Privilege and Male Privilege" by Peggy McIntosh and "Oppression" by Marilyn Frye are good places to start: http://www.iub.edu/~tchsotl/part2/McIntosh%20White%20Privilege.pdf http://www.iub.edu/~tchsotl/part2/McIntosh%20White%20Privile... http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Frye,%20Oppression.pdf http://www.calstatela.edu/faculty/tbettch/Frye,%20Oppression...
  - obstacle1 13y ago
    I graduated from a feminist-oriented humanities department where I engaged with these issues critically for a long time. Rather than linking me polemics from 1988 that don't address my point, consider that I disagree with the fundamental positions on a logical basis. If you'd like to engage the points I actually made in my post, feel free.
    - detcader 13y ago
      So what you're saying is, you won't read either essay.
      - obstacle1 13y ago
        What I'm saying is explicitly written down in the posts I've made. If you're willing to engage the points I'm actually making, I'll have a discussion with you. If you're just going to throw broad-reaching polemical feminism 101 articles at very specific points, I'm not going to take you seriously. You didn't even state why you think those articles apply to the (again, very specific) point I made.
        detcader 13y ago
        I thought it would be obvious by just reading the articles. Even in environments where there are a bit more women than men, men still have male privilege (as McIntosh describes it), women are still under oppression (as Frye describes it). Women still fear rape and all other male violence on college campuses, for example. "Majority" makes no difference when it comes to power structures; look at "the 1%" in the US..
tomp 13y ago
I'd really like to ask your teacher which organizations, exactly, did (s)he mean. My experience is limited, obviously, and I'm not from the US, but I've only rarely seen an organization with only male members, and even most of these have welcomed women who wanted to join.
- mtrimpe 13y ago
  The average board meeting would be a good example of such an organization.
mtrimpe 13y ago
In the end it boils down to the problem that it's very hard to explain the mechanics of culture to people who have little to gain from changing it. When you've pulled the short straw in your culture, whether it's due to race, sex, orientation or something else, you have a lot of incentive to attempt to change culture and you logically end up spending a lot of energy on learning the intricacies of culture and cultural change. If you're in the priviliged group however there's very little incentive to pay attention to these issues at all, since effecting cultural change would have little personal benefit. A byproduct of those systemic forces is that it makes discussions between those two sides very difficult; quite like how discussing technical topics in politics is very hard.

claudius 13y ago

The problem with ‘feminism’ is that it is essentially worthless as a label to denote a political ideology – sure, there are some people who call themselves ‘feminist’ who have perfectly respectable views, but there are also a bunch of people calling themselves ‘feminists’ who are worse sexists than anybody else. Sure, equal rights and all such things are good and proper aims, but ‘cutting off penises’ is not. Certainly there is a lack of women in some fields and one should attempt to help balance gender distributions. Surely nobody should feel ashamed for reporting an (even attempted) rape regardless of the way they dress. Of course, if strong independent women want to sell sex for money, they should be allowed to – oh, wait, one of the leading feminists (Alice Schwarzer) is strongly opposing any legalisation of prostitution and you will find people who call themselves feminists opposing any of the previously-mentioned targets as well. I like to think that ‘communism’ as a label has much the same problems – surely ‘people should have equal incomes’ is a somewhat acceptable (not necessarily agreeable) opinion, and calling yourself a communist possibly justified. But what is the relation between the ‘communist’ label here and the ‘communist’ label of the people who built a wall around their country (GDR) or killed all intellectuals (Burma)? Is there no word that one can use to describe the ‘sensible’ (equal rights, balancing of gender distributions etc.) feminism? Put another way, if I happen to come across someone who calls them-self a ‘feminist’ online, does that actually tell me anything about them?

MartinCron 13y ago
Is there any label that people apply to themselves or others that successfully filters out the lunatic fringe from reasonable people? I'm not afraid to call myself a feminist (even though that puts me in the same camp as some crazy people) in the same way that I'm not afraid to call myself a hacker or a man or a parent or an urban farmer.
- claudius 13y ago
  > Is there any label that people apply to themselves or others that successfully filters out the lunatic fringe from reasonable people? I don’t know, it probably has to do with the visibility of these fringe groups and your position in the spectrum described by the label. I am sure there are lunatic social democrats somewhere, I have just not yet met them, and I am also positive that there are lunatic liberal democrats somewhere, but again I have not yet met them. OTOH, there certainly are lunatic ‘scientists’, but they take a sufficiently small stage in public that I can self-identify as a scientist without having to worry about being confused with them. > I'm not afraid to call myself a feminist (even though that puts me in the same camp as some crazy people) in the same way that I'm not afraid to call myself a hacker or a man or a parent or an urban farmer. Even if I was a hacker (I really am not, just an interested guy), I would hesitate to call myself a hacker in front of an audience that associates the word mostly with their CC details being stolen. Language is difficult.

xixi77 13y ago

I have a very high opinion about feminism (and absolutely agree with the top comment on all points; events like this are great and necessary), but this high opinion is not at all shared with concepts like privilege, oppression, and intersectionality. And I particularly don't like how people who treat feminism as some kind of a subset of a broader "social justice" movement (and whose keywords you just mentioned) are imposing a very particular interpretation of feminism.

therogerwilco 13y ago

This is like feminism. Once I had a feminist say it was about equality for women AND men. I said, "would you like to join an organization called 'maleism'? It's for the equal treatment of men AND women."