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On March 19 2015 16:39 DemigodcelpH wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 09:08 Sandvich wrote: As for you "men's issues", the draft and manual labor immediately stick out as being irrelevant nonissues, as least in America. With the way we run our military, the draft will almost certainly never be called again. As for male predominance in manual labor, no one is forcing men into these jobs. Society at large isn't pigeonholing which jobs males can do, oppressing them by making them work in manual labor. You'd never hear woman snidely telling a man to go back to the factory or mine where he belongs, whereas you might actually hear the inverse directed at women (Especially when it comes to making games!)
Also very well said.
When was the last time you moved homes? Now tell me this, who lifted the couch - the women or the men? How many men do you see being nurses and what is usually the first question they are asked (HINT: it pertains to their sexual orientation)? There is absolutely an expectation of men doing harder manual labor in modern society than women. Whilst there might not be anyone expressively saying "get into the mine", I thought feminists of all groups would be able to identify such an obvious gender-role which is, when it comes to women not being leaders, portrayed as the worst sort of oppression the patriarchy exerts on women. Or are you actually proposing that men from they were little kids dreamt about being concreters or garbagemen or the likes?
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My brother worked construction and poured concert for years. He is currently a head mechanic in a military base and does lots of manual labor in that job. He loved the shit out of it and I doubt he would want to do anything else but build and fix things. Being garbage men is a well paid job in some cities in the US and its a desirable position for some people. I am sure there are plenty of women who would like to enter construction or skilled manual labor, but its can be very hard due to sexism in those fields. I think you are projecting a lot of what you could consider to be undesirable onto those professions, rather than viewing them as something others might enjoy.
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On March 19 2015 21:24 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 16:39 DemigodcelpH wrote:On March 19 2015 09:08 Sandvich wrote: As for you "men's issues", the draft and manual labor immediately stick out as being irrelevant nonissues, as least in America. With the way we run our military, the draft will almost certainly never be called again. As for male predominance in manual labor, no one is forcing men into these jobs. Society at large isn't pigeonholing which jobs males can do, oppressing them by making them work in manual labor. You'd never hear woman snidely telling a man to go back to the factory or mine where he belongs, whereas you might actually hear the inverse directed at women (Especially when it comes to making games!)
Also very well said. When was the last time you moved homes? Now tell me this, who lifted the couch - the women or the men? How many men do you see being nurses and what is usually the first question they are asked (HINT: it pertains to their sexual orientation)? There is absolutely an expectation of men doing harder manual labor in modern society than women. Whilst there might not be anyone expressively saying "get into the mine", I thought feminists of all groups would be able to identify such an obvious gender-role which is, when it comes to women not being leaders, portrayed as the worst sort of oppression the patriarchy exerts on women. Or are you actually proposing that men from they were little kids dreamt about being concreters or garbagemen or the likes? I don't think it's an expectation so much as a consequence of how we define masculinity as being buff and macho. Therefore men who adhere to societal gender roles are more readily able to do heavy lifting required to be a mover. As you implied, people don't usually dream of being movers, but most likely choose that line of work because they don't have other feasible options for employment. As for male nurses, again that's an example of going against the grain and the harassment or assumptions society makes when breaking its norms.
Being a leader is something that people of both genders dream of, there is a disparity in how many of each gender are able to realize this dream. Feminists think this is because of the misogynistic tendencies of our society, that women leaders are viewed differently and frequently passed over for promotion.
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On March 19 2015 15:19 kwizach wrote: The bulk of the movement has therefore been targeted at addressing the discriminations that women suffer from as women, in order to help them have the same rights and opportunities as men.
Sorry but the more "Freedom" given to these hard line feminists the more totalitarian they become.Observe Sweden, the country most obliging to the feminists.The call is now on to ban male urinals.How is this a womans right issue and why do feminists want to control this aspect of mens private life? Ask yourself that.It's about control, not "equality" anymore.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/13/sweden-left-party-toilet-stand_n_1590572.html Take a stand -- and sit down for what you believe in.
Male representatives on the Sormland County Council in Sweden should sit rather than stand while urinating in office restrooms, according to a motion advanced by the local Left Party.
Known as a socialist and feminist organization, the party claims that seated urination is more hygienic for men -- the practice decreases the likelihood of puddles and other unwanted residue forming in the stall -- in addition to being better for a man's health by more effectively emptying one's bladder, The Local reported.
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On March 19 2015 21:51 Plansix wrote: My brother worked construction and poured concert for years. He is currently a head mechanic in a military base and does lots of manual labor in that job. He loved the shit out of it and I doubt he would want to do anything else but build and fix things. Being garbage men is a well paid job in some cities in the US and its a desirable position for some people. I am sure there are plenty of women who would like to enter construction or skilled manual labor, but its can be very hard due to sexism in those fields. I think you are projecting a lot of what you could consider to be undesirable onto those professions, rather than viewing them as something others might enjoy.
The reason it is very hard for women to enter fields like construction work or skilled manual labour is because it is too physically demanding. It's not just about lifting things, it's also about doing that at a certain speed for a prolonged period of time.
Employers will not tell women that they can take half an hour extra at building a wall just because they are women. If a wall needs to be done in an hour, it needs to be done in an hour. If a garbage round needs to be done in four hours, it needs to be done within that timeframe.
There is a considerable difference in physical strength between men and women, which is the main reason why jobs that require physical strength are done by men all over the world. Not every difference in the ratio of men to women in certain fields is due to sexism. There are just some things in life men are better at or suited for, and other things women are better at or suited for.
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On March 19 2015 21:51 Plansix wrote: My brother worked construction and poured concert for years. He is currently a head mechanic in a military base and does lots of manual labor in that job. He loved the shit out of it and I doubt he would want to do anything else but build and fix things. Being garbage men is a well paid job in some cities in the US and its a desirable position for some people. I am sure there are plenty of women who would like to enter construction or skilled manual labor, but its can be very hard due to sexism in those fields. I think you are projecting a lot of what you could consider to be undesirable onto those professions, rather than viewing them as something others might enjoy.
I am not saying that being a concreter is not a worthwhile job - we need all jobs to make society function. I'm stating that men are doing more of those kinds of jobs which are hard on their bodies, partly resulting in a shorter expected lifespan and a big contributer to the shorter QALY of men. Following your own logic which you stated earlier in this thread, if we do not have a 50:50 representation across society it isn't an equal society. Having a shorter lifespan and worse quality of life isn't exactly a privilege and thus the over-representation of men in manual labor jobs compared to women are in fact putting men at a disadvantage - something no feminist has tried to remedy and in many cases refuses to even acknowledge.
EDIT: Do note that I do not subscribe to the 50:50 representation as a measure for a truly equal society and I think that men are simply more physiologically apt for manual labor than women.
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On March 19 2015 22:31 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 21:51 Plansix wrote: My brother worked construction and poured concert for years. He is currently a head mechanic in a military base and does lots of manual labor in that job. He loved the shit out of it and I doubt he would want to do anything else but build and fix things. Being garbage men is a well paid job in some cities in the US and its a desirable position for some people. I am sure there are plenty of women who would like to enter construction or skilled manual labor, but its can be very hard due to sexism in those fields. I think you are projecting a lot of what you could consider to be undesirable onto those professions, rather than viewing them as something others might enjoy. I am not saying that being a concreter is not a worthwhile job - we need all jobs to make society function. I'm stating that men are doing more of those kinds of jobs which are hard on their bodies, partly resulting in a shorter expected lifespan and a big contributer to the shorter QALY of men. Following your own logic which you stated earlier in this thread, if we do not have a 50:50 representation across society it isn't an equal society. Having a shorter lifespan and worse quality of life isn't exactly a privilege and thus the over-representation of men in manual labor jobs compared to women are in fact putting men at a disadvantage - something no feminist has tried to remedy and in many cases refuses to even acknowledge.
I am not asking for 50:50 representation, as that might not be obtainable for a specific company due to a number of reasons. The best metric I saw was a company a CEO state that his staff was 20% women, which equal to the percentage of female applications they received. The CEO said it was the metric he used to assure there was minimal resistance to hiring women and he could focus on attracting more female employees and interns. You are not wrong that there are real world limitations to obtaining a 50:50 ratio for a specific company and a better metric should be used.
And I can only speak from my experience with my brother, but any job that didn't involve him doing manual labor would likely make him miserable. It think it would shorten his lifespan to not be in that line of work. There are numerous people who love those fields and there are health problems related to it, but people can address those on a personal level.
Edit: Also the whole concept of men can lift more than women is true, but in those jobs there are numerous employees that can lift different amounts of weight. If a women wants to obtain the strength required to do the job, there is literally nothing stopping them from doing so.
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On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On March 19 2015 11:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 09:12 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 08:08 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 07:22 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 07:07 Mercy13 wrote: The definition of feminism that I prefer is egalitarianism with a particular focus on women's issues. I'm sure there are plenty of feminists and non-feminists alike who would disagree with this definition, but the term is used so broadly these days that I think there is room for a lot of different definitions that are more or less equally valid.
After all, men benefit too when gender roles are less restrictive. Maybe as gender roles are relaxed they will stop forcing us down those mines : p I just don't like 'egalitarianism' because I'm a fuckin' hipster and it's too mainstream 4 me. I don't think gender roles are inherently 'good' or 'bad', but are just kind of there. Gender roles are only bad when they limit people. Unfortunately, this almost always happens. You could have an interesting discussion about "Is this limiting nature an intrinsic feature of gender roles?", but I'm not going to. You and Plansix are both right and both wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism I mean, I guess I could just link something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FascismAnd you may scroll down to "criticisms of fascism" or click on your feminism link and go down to "critique of feminism". Furthermore, I'm not creating a 'strawman' if I'm addressing actual ideological philosophies that have been proposed by feminist authors. Also, why is the strawperson a 'man'? That's pretty sexist if you ask me. According to this logic, we define an entire group by a certain subset of that group. Not all Muslims are defined by ISIS, or Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church, or atheists by militant Chinese atheists, or men by all other men, or women by all other women, or any other group you can think of. That logic is utterly ridiculous and you are actively doing it by saying, "Some feminists are saying X, so feminism is defined by X!". Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. whoa nice post, lots to read about.
On March 19 2015 22:29 maartendq wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 21:51 Plansix wrote: My brother worked construction and poured concert for years. He is currently a head mechanic in a military base and does lots of manual labor in that job. He loved the shit out of it and I doubt he would want to do anything else but build and fix things. Being garbage men is a well paid job in some cities in the US and its a desirable position for some people. I am sure there are plenty of women who would like to enter construction or skilled manual labor, but its can be very hard due to sexism in those fields. I think you are projecting a lot of what you could consider to be undesirable onto those professions, rather than viewing them as something others might enjoy. The reason it is very hard for women to enter fields like construction work or skilled manual labour is because it is too physically demanding. It's not just about lifting things, it's also about doing that at a certain speed for a prolonged period of time. Employers will not tell women that they can take half an hour extra at building a wall just because they are women. If a wall needs to be done in an hour, it needs to be done in an hour. If a garbage round needs to be done in four hours, it needs to be done within that timeframe. There is a considerable difference in physical strength between men and women, which is the main reason why jobs that require physical strength are done by men all over the world. Not every difference in the ratio of men to women in certain fields is due to sexism. There are just some things in life men are better at or suited for, and other things women are better at or suited for. ick, I mean i get why you would say that looking at the average, but its people that think like you that make it hard for a big strong fast woman who loves construction to get hired. Shes stronger and faster than the average male on the team but because she has a vagina, and people think like you do, shes not "suited" for the job. Instead of saying men are more suitable for a job we should be saying big strong people are more suitable for the job, and of course there should be no relaxation on the requirements for women, it should be equal opportunity. Which gender do you think is more suitable for manager and ceo positions and why are these still dominated by men? I don't think it should be 50-50 in everything. I think it should be the best person for the job in everything, and I don't think it is right now.
Take for example orchestras and blind auditions. Even in the most liberal of countries switching to blind auditions saw a very large increase in the number of women accepted. None of the auditioners would identify as having prejudice against women but I guess its subconscious because the results indicate that they were. I think this happens a lot in the work place when considering promotions, hiring, job assignment, etc. Clearly you would be more ready to hire a man to work on your construction team than a woman regardless of their ability to perform their job and I think that's sexual discrimination in its most basic definition.
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On March 19 2015 15:53 xM(Z wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 15:19 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 15:01 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 14:29 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 11:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 09:12 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 08:08 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 07:22 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 07:07 Mercy13 wrote: The definition of feminism that I prefer is egalitarianism with a particular focus on women's issues. I'm sure there are plenty of feminists and non-feminists alike who would disagree with this definition, but the term is used so broadly these days that I think there is room for a lot of different definitions that are more or less equally valid.
After all, men benefit too when gender roles are less restrictive. Maybe as gender roles are relaxed they will stop forcing us down those mines : p I just don't like 'egalitarianism' because I'm a fuckin' hipster and it's too mainstream 4 me. I don't think gender roles are inherently 'good' or 'bad', but are just kind of there. Gender roles are only bad when they limit people. Unfortunately, this almost always happens. You could have an interesting discussion about "Is this limiting nature an intrinsic feature of gender roles?", but I'm not going to. You and Plansix are both right and both wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism I mean, I guess I could just link something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FascismAnd you may scroll down to "criticisms of fascism" or click on your feminism link and go down to "critique of feminism". Furthermore, I'm not creating a 'strawman' if I'm addressing actual ideological philosophies that have been proposed by feminist authors. Also, why is the strawperson a 'man'? That's pretty sexist if you ask me. According to this logic, we define an entire group by a certain subset of that group. Not all Muslims are defined by ISIS, or Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church, or atheists by militant Chinese atheists, or men by all other men, or women by all other women, or any other group you can think of. That logic is utterly ridiculous and you are actively doing it by saying, "Some feminists are saying X, so feminism is defined by X!". + Show Spoiler [long post] +Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. I'm not sure you realize that nowhere in your post did you disprove the fact that feminism is first and foremost about wanting equality between the sexes on the political, economical and social levels. Your extremely incomplete list of prominent first and second waves feminist thinkers certainly did not disprove it, and your cherry-picking of a few quotes on one feminist organization's website didn't disprove it (in fact, if you take a look at that organization's "what we want" section, you'll see that what they declare they want is precisely equality between the sexes). It's one thing to disagree with the kind of "us vs them" mentality they're pushing forward on their website, but that doesn't change the fact that the ultimate objective is equality. Likewise, I'm not sure where you got the idea that the use of concepts like that of "patriarchy" was somehow antithetical to a desire to achieve equality - precisely by fighting against patriarchal systems. Like Stratos_speAr rightly said, feminism is defined as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities", "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes", etc. You're free to disagree with whatever feminist authors and organizations you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the core objective of feminism is to achieve equality between the sexes. I'm not sure the thread's original post warrants transforming this thread into a discussion about what feminism is and isn't, though - this is supposed to be a thread about sexist harassment in video games. the second definition of the word in that dictionary ( which you conveniently left out) is: "organized activity in support of women's rights and interests". that doesn't sound to equal to me. i just can't believe feminism is about equality just because it is called femi-n-ism. you can call it oversimplified misogyny but it's just basic logic for me. It is called feminism because women have historically been, as a group, denied the political, economical and social independence and legitimacy that men have enjoyed. The bulk of the movement has therefore been targeted at addressing the discriminations that women suffer from as women, in order to help them have the same rights and opportunities as men. This doesn't mean that men aren't also affected by, for example, stereotypical gender roles, but it does mean that it is women and not men who have historically and presently been put in a subordinate position because of their gender in patriarchal systems. Since feminism is about achieving equality, though, you'll find plenty of feminist scholars and activists also deconstructing and fighting against discriminations and negative gender roles that apply to men. i have no problem with women having their own movement that deals with women issues, called feminism but every time i see a dude like you pushing the 'woman-man' equality agenda over and over and over i can't help but see you strapping on some C4 and randomly start blowing men up just because ... fuck it and why not; Ex: in a random community, there's like 50 men and 30 women(thing which is totally against the QUOTA) so 20 men must die to achieve equality. you are a scary extremist. it's just how you look to me.
The fact that you see feminism as extreme and an attack on you is a -You- problem. Seeing the entirety of feminism like this is is a gross generalization of a huge amount of people that have nothing to do with the "blame men for everything!" rhetoric.
...
I'm done. Feminists are right. You guys are stupid.
And we're supposed to take you seriously?
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On March 19 2015 22:51 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 15:53 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 15:19 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 15:01 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 14:29 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 11:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 09:12 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 08:08 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 07:22 ninazerg wrote: [quote]
I just don't like 'egalitarianism' because I'm a fuckin' hipster and it's too mainstream 4 me. I don't think gender roles are inherently 'good' or 'bad', but are just kind of there. Gender roles are only bad when they limit people. Unfortunately, this almost always happens. You could have an interesting discussion about "Is this limiting nature an intrinsic feature of gender roles?", but I'm not going to. You and Plansix are both right and both wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism I mean, I guess I could just link something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FascismAnd you may scroll down to "criticisms of fascism" or click on your feminism link and go down to "critique of feminism". Furthermore, I'm not creating a 'strawman' if I'm addressing actual ideological philosophies that have been proposed by feminist authors. Also, why is the strawperson a 'man'? That's pretty sexist if you ask me. According to this logic, we define an entire group by a certain subset of that group. Not all Muslims are defined by ISIS, or Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church, or atheists by militant Chinese atheists, or men by all other men, or women by all other women, or any other group you can think of. That logic is utterly ridiculous and you are actively doing it by saying, "Some feminists are saying X, so feminism is defined by X!". + Show Spoiler [long post] +Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. I'm not sure you realize that nowhere in your post did you disprove the fact that feminism is first and foremost about wanting equality between the sexes on the political, economical and social levels. Your extremely incomplete list of prominent first and second waves feminist thinkers certainly did not disprove it, and your cherry-picking of a few quotes on one feminist organization's website didn't disprove it (in fact, if you take a look at that organization's "what we want" section, you'll see that what they declare they want is precisely equality between the sexes). It's one thing to disagree with the kind of "us vs them" mentality they're pushing forward on their website, but that doesn't change the fact that the ultimate objective is equality. Likewise, I'm not sure where you got the idea that the use of concepts like that of "patriarchy" was somehow antithetical to a desire to achieve equality - precisely by fighting against patriarchal systems. Like Stratos_speAr rightly said, feminism is defined as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities", "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes", etc. You're free to disagree with whatever feminist authors and organizations you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the core objective of feminism is to achieve equality between the sexes. I'm not sure the thread's original post warrants transforming this thread into a discussion about what feminism is and isn't, though - this is supposed to be a thread about sexist harassment in video games. the second definition of the word in that dictionary ( which you conveniently left out) is: "organized activity in support of women's rights and interests". that doesn't sound to equal to me. i just can't believe feminism is about equality just because it is called femi-n-ism. you can call it oversimplified misogyny but it's just basic logic for me. It is called feminism because women have historically been, as a group, denied the political, economical and social independence and legitimacy that men have enjoyed. The bulk of the movement has therefore been targeted at addressing the discriminations that women suffer from as women, in order to help them have the same rights and opportunities as men. This doesn't mean that men aren't also affected by, for example, stereotypical gender roles, but it does mean that it is women and not men who have historically and presently been put in a subordinate position because of their gender in patriarchal systems. Since feminism is about achieving equality, though, you'll find plenty of feminist scholars and activists also deconstructing and fighting against discriminations and negative gender roles that apply to men. i have no problem with women having their own movement that deals with women issues, called feminism but every time i see a dude like you pushing the 'woman-man' equality agenda over and over and over i can't help but see you strapping on some C4 and randomly start blowing men up just because ... fuck it and why not; Ex: in a random community, there's like 50 men and 30 women(thing which is totally against the QUOTA) so 20 men must die to achieve equality. you are a scary extremist. it's just how you look to me. The fact that you see feminism as extreme and an attack on you is a -You- problem. In other words, it's entirely your fault for having this radical perception of feminism where there are plenty of feminists that don't approach it like that at all.
Considering that a majority (referencing the huffingtonpost article here) considers feminism extreme I would say it is an issue of feminism and not of any individual. There are plenty of feminists who actively fight against men trying to obtain equal rights to those of women for example in the justice system and especially when it comes to child custody laws. The no-true-Scotsmen argument of those feminists not being actual feminists is hilariously bad because why is your definition of feminism any more valid than theirs?
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On March 19 2015 22:44 ComaDose wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On March 19 2015 11:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 09:12 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 08:08 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 07:22 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 07:07 Mercy13 wrote: The definition of feminism that I prefer is egalitarianism with a particular focus on women's issues. I'm sure there are plenty of feminists and non-feminists alike who would disagree with this definition, but the term is used so broadly these days that I think there is room for a lot of different definitions that are more or less equally valid.
After all, men benefit too when gender roles are less restrictive. Maybe as gender roles are relaxed they will stop forcing us down those mines : p I just don't like 'egalitarianism' because I'm a fuckin' hipster and it's too mainstream 4 me. I don't think gender roles are inherently 'good' or 'bad', but are just kind of there. Gender roles are only bad when they limit people. Unfortunately, this almost always happens. You could have an interesting discussion about "Is this limiting nature an intrinsic feature of gender roles?", but I'm not going to. You and Plansix are both right and both wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism I mean, I guess I could just link something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FascismAnd you may scroll down to "criticisms of fascism" or click on your feminism link and go down to "critique of feminism". Furthermore, I'm not creating a 'strawman' if I'm addressing actual ideological philosophies that have been proposed by feminist authors. Also, why is the strawperson a 'man'? That's pretty sexist if you ask me. According to this logic, we define an entire group by a certain subset of that group. Not all Muslims are defined by ISIS, or Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church, or atheists by militant Chinese atheists, or men by all other men, or women by all other women, or any other group you can think of. That logic is utterly ridiculous and you are actively doing it by saying, "Some feminists are saying X, so feminism is defined by X!". Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. whoa nice post, lots to read about. Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 22:29 maartendq wrote:On March 19 2015 21:51 Plansix wrote: My brother worked construction and poured concert for years. He is currently a head mechanic in a military base and does lots of manual labor in that job. He loved the shit out of it and I doubt he would want to do anything else but build and fix things. Being garbage men is a well paid job in some cities in the US and its a desirable position for some people. I am sure there are plenty of women who would like to enter construction or skilled manual labor, but its can be very hard due to sexism in those fields. I think you are projecting a lot of what you could consider to be undesirable onto those professions, rather than viewing them as something others might enjoy. The reason it is very hard for women to enter fields like construction work or skilled manual labour is because it is too physically demanding. It's not just about lifting things, it's also about doing that at a certain speed for a prolonged period of time. Employers will not tell women that they can take half an hour extra at building a wall just because they are women. If a wall needs to be done in an hour, it needs to be done in an hour. If a garbage round needs to be done in four hours, it needs to be done within that timeframe. There is a considerable difference in physical strength between men and women, which is the main reason why jobs that require physical strength are done by men all over the world. Not every difference in the ratio of men to women in certain fields is due to sexism. There are just some things in life men are better at or suited for, and other things women are better at or suited for. ick, I mean i get why you would say that looking at the average, but its people that think like you that make it hard for a big strong fast woman who loves construction to get hired. Shes stronger and faster than the average male on the team but because she has a vagina, and people think like you do, shes not "suited" for the job. Instead of saying men are more suitable for a job we should be saying big strong people are more suitable for the job, and of course there should be no relaxation on the requirements for women, it should be equal opportunity. Which gender do you think is more suitable for manager and ceo positions and why are these still dominated by men? I don't think it should be 50-50 in everything. I think it should be the best person for the job in everything, and I don't think it is right now. Take for example orchestras and blind auditions. Even in the most liberal of countries switching to blind auditions saw a very large increase in the number of women accepted. None of the auditioners would identify as having prejudice against women but I guess its subconscious because the results indicate that they were. I think this happens a lot in the work place when considering promotions, hiring, job assignment, etc. Clearly you would be more ready to hire a man to work on your construction team than a woman regardless of their ability to perform their job and I think that's sexual discrimination in its most basic definition. A very small minority of women is big, fast and strong (and are usually professional athletes). That minority would not even make a dent in the men-to-women ratio of manual labour jobs.
When it comes to white-collar jobs with not even the slightest bit of physical demands, I agree, people should hire the person most suitable for the job regardless of gender, sexual orientation or religious preference. I was merely reacting to Plansix who claimed that sexism was an important reason very few women work in construction or other fields requiring large amounts of physical strength and stamina.
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On March 19 2015 22:56 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 22:51 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 15:53 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 15:19 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 15:01 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 14:29 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 11:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 09:12 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 08:08 Stratos_speAr wrote:[quote] Gender roles are only bad when they limit people. Unfortunately, this almost always happens. You could have an interesting discussion about "Is this limiting nature an intrinsic feature of gender roles?", but I'm not going to. You and Plansix are both right and both wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism I mean, I guess I could just link something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FascismAnd you may scroll down to "criticisms of fascism" or click on your feminism link and go down to "critique of feminism". Furthermore, I'm not creating a 'strawman' if I'm addressing actual ideological philosophies that have been proposed by feminist authors. Also, why is the strawperson a 'man'? That's pretty sexist if you ask me. According to this logic, we define an entire group by a certain subset of that group. Not all Muslims are defined by ISIS, or Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church, or atheists by militant Chinese atheists, or men by all other men, or women by all other women, or any other group you can think of. That logic is utterly ridiculous and you are actively doing it by saying, "Some feminists are saying X, so feminism is defined by X!". + Show Spoiler [long post] +Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. I'm not sure you realize that nowhere in your post did you disprove the fact that feminism is first and foremost about wanting equality between the sexes on the political, economical and social levels. Your extremely incomplete list of prominent first and second waves feminist thinkers certainly did not disprove it, and your cherry-picking of a few quotes on one feminist organization's website didn't disprove it (in fact, if you take a look at that organization's "what we want" section, you'll see that what they declare they want is precisely equality between the sexes). It's one thing to disagree with the kind of "us vs them" mentality they're pushing forward on their website, but that doesn't change the fact that the ultimate objective is equality. Likewise, I'm not sure where you got the idea that the use of concepts like that of "patriarchy" was somehow antithetical to a desire to achieve equality - precisely by fighting against patriarchal systems. Like Stratos_speAr rightly said, feminism is defined as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities", "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes", etc. You're free to disagree with whatever feminist authors and organizations you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the core objective of feminism is to achieve equality between the sexes. I'm not sure the thread's original post warrants transforming this thread into a discussion about what feminism is and isn't, though - this is supposed to be a thread about sexist harassment in video games. the second definition of the word in that dictionary ( which you conveniently left out) is: "organized activity in support of women's rights and interests". that doesn't sound to equal to me. i just can't believe feminism is about equality just because it is called femi-n-ism. you can call it oversimplified misogyny but it's just basic logic for me. It is called feminism because women have historically been, as a group, denied the political, economical and social independence and legitimacy that men have enjoyed. The bulk of the movement has therefore been targeted at addressing the discriminations that women suffer from as women, in order to help them have the same rights and opportunities as men. This doesn't mean that men aren't also affected by, for example, stereotypical gender roles, but it does mean that it is women and not men who have historically and presently been put in a subordinate position because of their gender in patriarchal systems. Since feminism is about achieving equality, though, you'll find plenty of feminist scholars and activists also deconstructing and fighting against discriminations and negative gender roles that apply to men. i have no problem with women having their own movement that deals with women issues, called feminism but every time i see a dude like you pushing the 'woman-man' equality agenda over and over and over i can't help but see you strapping on some C4 and randomly start blowing men up just because ... fuck it and why not; Ex: in a random community, there's like 50 men and 30 women(thing which is totally against the QUOTA) so 20 men must die to achieve equality. you are a scary extremist. it's just how you look to me. The fact that you see feminism as extreme and an attack on you is a -You- problem. In other words, it's entirely your fault for having this radical perception of feminism where there are plenty of feminists that don't approach it like that at all. Considering that a majority (referencing the huffingtonpost article here) considers feminism extreme I would say it is an issue of feminism and not of any individual. There are plenty of feminists who actively fight against men trying to obtain equal rights to those of women for example in the justice system and especially when it comes to child custody laws. The no-true-Scotsmen argument of those feminists not being actual feminists is hilariously bad because why is your definition of feminism any more valid than theirs?
Probably because I never said that they weren't feminists.
If you want to accuse me of a logical fallacy, you should probably know what you're talking about.
What I've been saying is that they aren't all feminists. You don't define a group by its radical parts, especially when there have been feminists critiquing other feminists for being too radical.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#Critique_of_feminism_and_anti-feminism
Not only that, your interpretation of that HuffPost poll is ridiculously simplified.
When was the last time you moved homes? Now tell me this, who lifted the couch - the women or the men? How many men do you see being nurses and what is usually the first question they are asked (HINT: it pertains to their sexual orientation)? There is absolutely an expectation of men doing harder manual labor in modern society than women. Whilst there might not be anyone expressively saying "get into the mine", I thought feminists of all groups would be able to identify such an obvious gender-role which is, when it comes to women not being leaders, portrayed as the worst sort of oppression the patriarchy exerts on women. Or are you actually proposing that men from they were little kids dreamt about being concreters or garbagemen or the likes?
I'm actually beginning my nursing studies, and I've only been welcomed with open arms. A lot of jobs that are typically "female jobs" are really keen on getting more men to work them, largely because they see the fact that it would be hypocritical not to if they were also promoting gender equality.
The thing is that most of these are simply due to men having the choice. Men are not forced to do the manual labor. They are not forced, coerced, or otherwise told that they should take manual labor jobs. Men make up a disproportionate amount of these workers, but that's precisely because women aren't welcome in these jobs, not because men are forced into them instead of other jobs.
The few areas where men really deserve equality movements are things like incarceration sentences, child custody, and the draft. However, we need to realize that most of the disparity ("men work all the hard labor jobs!") are because we don't let women do these things, not because men are forced to do them.
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On March 19 2015 23:06 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 22:56 Ghostcom wrote:On March 19 2015 22:51 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 15:53 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 15:19 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 15:01 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 14:29 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 11:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 09:12 ninazerg wrote:[quote] I mean, I guess I could just link something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FascismAnd you may scroll down to "criticisms of fascism" or click on your feminism link and go down to "critique of feminism". Furthermore, I'm not creating a 'strawman' if I'm addressing actual ideological philosophies that have been proposed by feminist authors. Also, why is the strawperson a 'man'? That's pretty sexist if you ask me. According to this logic, we define an entire group by a certain subset of that group. Not all Muslims are defined by ISIS, or Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church, or atheists by militant Chinese atheists, or men by all other men, or women by all other women, or any other group you can think of. That logic is utterly ridiculous and you are actively doing it by saying, "Some feminists are saying X, so feminism is defined by X!". + Show Spoiler [long post] +Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. I'm not sure you realize that nowhere in your post did you disprove the fact that feminism is first and foremost about wanting equality between the sexes on the political, economical and social levels. Your extremely incomplete list of prominent first and second waves feminist thinkers certainly did not disprove it, and your cherry-picking of a few quotes on one feminist organization's website didn't disprove it (in fact, if you take a look at that organization's "what we want" section, you'll see that what they declare they want is precisely equality between the sexes). It's one thing to disagree with the kind of "us vs them" mentality they're pushing forward on their website, but that doesn't change the fact that the ultimate objective is equality. Likewise, I'm not sure where you got the idea that the use of concepts like that of "patriarchy" was somehow antithetical to a desire to achieve equality - precisely by fighting against patriarchal systems. Like Stratos_speAr rightly said, feminism is defined as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities", "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes", etc. You're free to disagree with whatever feminist authors and organizations you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the core objective of feminism is to achieve equality between the sexes. I'm not sure the thread's original post warrants transforming this thread into a discussion about what feminism is and isn't, though - this is supposed to be a thread about sexist harassment in video games. the second definition of the word in that dictionary ( which you conveniently left out) is: "organized activity in support of women's rights and interests". that doesn't sound to equal to me. i just can't believe feminism is about equality just because it is called femi-n-ism. you can call it oversimplified misogyny but it's just basic logic for me. It is called feminism because women have historically been, as a group, denied the political, economical and social independence and legitimacy that men have enjoyed. The bulk of the movement has therefore been targeted at addressing the discriminations that women suffer from as women, in order to help them have the same rights and opportunities as men. This doesn't mean that men aren't also affected by, for example, stereotypical gender roles, but it does mean that it is women and not men who have historically and presently been put in a subordinate position because of their gender in patriarchal systems. Since feminism is about achieving equality, though, you'll find plenty of feminist scholars and activists also deconstructing and fighting against discriminations and negative gender roles that apply to men. i have no problem with women having their own movement that deals with women issues, called feminism but every time i see a dude like you pushing the 'woman-man' equality agenda over and over and over i can't help but see you strapping on some C4 and randomly start blowing men up just because ... fuck it and why not; Ex: in a random community, there's like 50 men and 30 women(thing which is totally against the QUOTA) so 20 men must die to achieve equality. you are a scary extremist. it's just how you look to me. The fact that you see feminism as extreme and an attack on you is a -You- problem. In other words, it's entirely your fault for having this radical perception of feminism where there are plenty of feminists that don't approach it like that at all. Considering that a majority (referencing the huffingtonpost article here) considers feminism extreme I would say it is an issue of feminism and not of any individual. There are plenty of feminists who actively fight against men trying to obtain equal rights to those of women for example in the justice system and especially when it comes to child custody laws. The no-true-Scotsmen argument of those feminists not being actual feminists is hilariously bad because why is your definition of feminism any more valid than theirs? Probably because I never said that they weren't feminists. If you want to accuse me of a logical fallacy, you should probably know what you're talking about. What I've been saying is that they aren't all feminists. You don't define a group by its radical parts, especially when there have been feminists critiquing other feminists for being too radical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#Critique_of_feminism_and_anti-feminismNot only that, your interpretation of that HuffPost poll is ridiculously simplified. you are claiming the simplification without giving a better explanation.
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On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Show nested quote +Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right?
Personally I don't see much to disagree with in what you've quoted there, and I don't think the spin you've put on it is apt.
For instance, it doesn't say men are sexist simply by virtue of being male. It says that men are sexist if they go through life enjoying the benefits of male supremacy.
Suppose I go to a venue, and there's an express line for white people and a long line for black people. If I join the white line, go in and watch the show, I am being racist. If I know the playing field isn't level and play anyway, I'm tacitly approving the imbalance. Obviously competing for jobs and suchlike is a bit different from choosing to watch a show, but the principle is the same.
You presumably think this accusation of sexism is unfair because, by these standards, a man would have to go to incredible - even impossible - lengths not to be sexist in today's society. Unfortunately, you don't get to define sexism for your own convenience. Avoiding being racist or anti-semitic has been extraordinarily difficult in certain places and times in history - should the prevailing social climates redefine what those terms meant?
Secondly, throwing sarcastic 'never's out there doesn't change the fact that men in a stable relationship generally don't do anything like as much housework or childcare. Many men are happy to let themselves and their partners slip into gender roles inherited from their parents' generation, and will kick up a fuss should someone try to change those roles. I've been married for twenty years, and I'm still realising just how much I take for granted based on my own upbringing. How much of our day-to-day lives my wife has to juggle that it never occurs to me to spare a thought for.
Show nested quote +We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT?
When you use other words, you should make sure they mean the same thing.
Obviously a smile and a compliment is a nice thing. But when it's contingent upon something (in this case, "well done for making yourself attractive to men"), it is also a method of exerting control. Is that really so controversial? If I praise my child for good behaviour, isn't the intention to reinforce that behaviour? Even if I don't intend it, won't that be the outcome?
Again, you may want to throw up your hands and say "this is ridiculous - avoiding being sexist is just too hard." You may prefer your own interpretation of sexism, which is basically "standing out as extra-sexist, over and above the background radiation of society". But that doesn't make you right.
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On March 19 2015 23:01 maartendq wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 22:44 ComaDose wrote:On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On March 19 2015 11:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 09:12 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 08:08 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 07:22 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 07:07 Mercy13 wrote: The definition of feminism that I prefer is egalitarianism with a particular focus on women's issues. I'm sure there are plenty of feminists and non-feminists alike who would disagree with this definition, but the term is used so broadly these days that I think there is room for a lot of different definitions that are more or less equally valid.
After all, men benefit too when gender roles are less restrictive. Maybe as gender roles are relaxed they will stop forcing us down those mines : p I just don't like 'egalitarianism' because I'm a fuckin' hipster and it's too mainstream 4 me. I don't think gender roles are inherently 'good' or 'bad', but are just kind of there. Gender roles are only bad when they limit people. Unfortunately, this almost always happens. You could have an interesting discussion about "Is this limiting nature an intrinsic feature of gender roles?", but I'm not going to. You and Plansix are both right and both wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism I mean, I guess I could just link something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FascismAnd you may scroll down to "criticisms of fascism" or click on your feminism link and go down to "critique of feminism". Furthermore, I'm not creating a 'strawman' if I'm addressing actual ideological philosophies that have been proposed by feminist authors. Also, why is the strawperson a 'man'? That's pretty sexist if you ask me. According to this logic, we define an entire group by a certain subset of that group. Not all Muslims are defined by ISIS, or Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church, or atheists by militant Chinese atheists, or men by all other men, or women by all other women, or any other group you can think of. That logic is utterly ridiculous and you are actively doing it by saying, "Some feminists are saying X, so feminism is defined by X!". Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. whoa nice post, lots to read about. On March 19 2015 22:29 maartendq wrote:On March 19 2015 21:51 Plansix wrote: My brother worked construction and poured concert for years. He is currently a head mechanic in a military base and does lots of manual labor in that job. He loved the shit out of it and I doubt he would want to do anything else but build and fix things. Being garbage men is a well paid job in some cities in the US and its a desirable position for some people. I am sure there are plenty of women who would like to enter construction or skilled manual labor, but its can be very hard due to sexism in those fields. I think you are projecting a lot of what you could consider to be undesirable onto those professions, rather than viewing them as something others might enjoy. The reason it is very hard for women to enter fields like construction work or skilled manual labour is because it is too physically demanding. It's not just about lifting things, it's also about doing that at a certain speed for a prolonged period of time. Employers will not tell women that they can take half an hour extra at building a wall just because they are women. If a wall needs to be done in an hour, it needs to be done in an hour. If a garbage round needs to be done in four hours, it needs to be done within that timeframe. There is a considerable difference in physical strength between men and women, which is the main reason why jobs that require physical strength are done by men all over the world. Not every difference in the ratio of men to women in certain fields is due to sexism. There are just some things in life men are better at or suited for, and other things women are better at or suited for. ick, I mean i get why you would say that looking at the average, but its people that think like you that make it hard for a big strong fast woman who loves construction to get hired. Shes stronger and faster than the average male on the team but because she has a vagina, and people think like you do, shes not "suited" for the job. Instead of saying men are more suitable for a job we should be saying big strong people are more suitable for the job, and of course there should be no relaxation on the requirements for women, it should be equal opportunity. Which gender do you think is more suitable for manager and ceo positions and why are these still dominated by men? I don't think it should be 50-50 in everything. I think it should be the best person for the job in everything, and I don't think it is right now. Take for example orchestras and blind auditions. Even in the most liberal of countries switching to blind auditions saw a very large increase in the number of women accepted. None of the auditioners would identify as having prejudice against women but I guess its subconscious because the results indicate that they were. I think this happens a lot in the work place when considering promotions, hiring, job assignment, etc. Clearly you would be more ready to hire a man to work on your construction team than a woman regardless of their ability to perform their job and I think that's sexual discrimination in its most basic definition. A very small minority of women is big, fast and strong (and are usually professional athletes). That minority would not even make a dent in the men-to-women ratio of manual labour jobs. When it comes to white-collar jobs with not even the slightest bit of physical demands, I agree, people should hire the person most suitable for the job regardless of gender, sexual orientation or religious preference. I was merely reacting to Plansix who claimed that sexism was an important reason very few women work in construction or other fields requiring large amounts of physical strength and stamina. Why do you think people should hire the person most suitable for the job only when there is not even the slightest bit of physical demand? If they meet the physical requirements and were better in every other aspect you would still pick the guy over the girl? Like I'm not that big and strong but I do go to the gym a few couple (I'm kinda lazy) times a week so maybe stronger than the average video game jockey. And I have seen at least a few women that were stronger than me in the last year at the gym. Just at my little small town gym. Like if you take the smallest weakest guy on a construction team as a baseline there are a lot of women more physically capable than him and definitely not just professional athletes. I honestly don't care what the ratio is, it just sucks that people that think like you are in a hiring position, actively thinking that penises are somehow advantageous to the job.
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On March 19 2015 23:06 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 22:56 Ghostcom wrote:On March 19 2015 22:51 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 15:53 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 15:19 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 15:01 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 14:29 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 11:13 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 09:12 ninazerg wrote:[quote] I mean, I guess I could just link something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FascismAnd you may scroll down to "criticisms of fascism" or click on your feminism link and go down to "critique of feminism". Furthermore, I'm not creating a 'strawman' if I'm addressing actual ideological philosophies that have been proposed by feminist authors. Also, why is the strawperson a 'man'? That's pretty sexist if you ask me. According to this logic, we define an entire group by a certain subset of that group. Not all Muslims are defined by ISIS, or Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church, or atheists by militant Chinese atheists, or men by all other men, or women by all other women, or any other group you can think of. That logic is utterly ridiculous and you are actively doing it by saying, "Some feminists are saying X, so feminism is defined by X!". + Show Spoiler [long post] +Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. I'm not sure you realize that nowhere in your post did you disprove the fact that feminism is first and foremost about wanting equality between the sexes on the political, economical and social levels. Your extremely incomplete list of prominent first and second waves feminist thinkers certainly did not disprove it, and your cherry-picking of a few quotes on one feminist organization's website didn't disprove it (in fact, if you take a look at that organization's "what we want" section, you'll see that what they declare they want is precisely equality between the sexes). It's one thing to disagree with the kind of "us vs them" mentality they're pushing forward on their website, but that doesn't change the fact that the ultimate objective is equality. Likewise, I'm not sure where you got the idea that the use of concepts like that of "patriarchy" was somehow antithetical to a desire to achieve equality - precisely by fighting against patriarchal systems. Like Stratos_speAr rightly said, feminism is defined as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities", "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes", etc. You're free to disagree with whatever feminist authors and organizations you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the core objective of feminism is to achieve equality between the sexes. I'm not sure the thread's original post warrants transforming this thread into a discussion about what feminism is and isn't, though - this is supposed to be a thread about sexist harassment in video games. the second definition of the word in that dictionary ( which you conveniently left out) is: "organized activity in support of women's rights and interests". that doesn't sound to equal to me. i just can't believe feminism is about equality just because it is called femi-n-ism. you can call it oversimplified misogyny but it's just basic logic for me. It is called feminism because women have historically been, as a group, denied the political, economical and social independence and legitimacy that men have enjoyed. The bulk of the movement has therefore been targeted at addressing the discriminations that women suffer from as women, in order to help them have the same rights and opportunities as men. This doesn't mean that men aren't also affected by, for example, stereotypical gender roles, but it does mean that it is women and not men who have historically and presently been put in a subordinate position because of their gender in patriarchal systems. Since feminism is about achieving equality, though, you'll find plenty of feminist scholars and activists also deconstructing and fighting against discriminations and negative gender roles that apply to men. i have no problem with women having their own movement that deals with women issues, called feminism but every time i see a dude like you pushing the 'woman-man' equality agenda over and over and over i can't help but see you strapping on some C4 and randomly start blowing men up just because ... fuck it and why not; Ex: in a random community, there's like 50 men and 30 women(thing which is totally against the QUOTA) so 20 men must die to achieve equality. you are a scary extremist. it's just how you look to me. The fact that you see feminism as extreme and an attack on you is a -You- problem. In other words, it's entirely your fault for having this radical perception of feminism where there are plenty of feminists that don't approach it like that at all. Considering that a majority (referencing the huffingtonpost article here) considers feminism extreme I would say it is an issue of feminism and not of any individual. There are plenty of feminists who actively fight against men trying to obtain equal rights to those of women for example in the justice system and especially when it comes to child custody laws. The no-true-Scotsmen argument of those feminists not being actual feminists is hilariously bad because why is your definition of feminism any more valid than theirs? Probably because I never said that they weren't feminists. If you want to accuse me of a logical fallacy, you should probably know what you're talking about. What I've been saying is that they aren't all feminists. You don't define a group by its radical parts, especially when there have been feminists critiquing other feminists for being too radical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#Critique_of_feminism_and_anti-feminismNot only that, your interpretation of that HuffPost poll is ridiculously simplified.
And not all gamers are harassing women, but for some reason the entire gaming community is toxic... Please tell me why one group should be defined by it's radicals whilst the other shouldn't? And what is your interpretation of the HuffPost poll?
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On March 19 2015 23:08 Hryul wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 23:06 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 22:56 Ghostcom wrote:On March 19 2015 22:51 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 15:53 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 15:19 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 15:01 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 14:29 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:On March 19 2015 11:13 Stratos_speAr wrote: [quote]
According to this logic, we define an entire group by a certain subset of that group.
Not all Muslims are defined by ISIS, or Christians by the Westboro Baptist Church, or atheists by militant Chinese atheists, or men by all other men, or women by all other women, or any other group you can think of. That logic is utterly ridiculous and you are actively doing it by saying, "Some feminists are saying X, so feminism is defined by X!".
+ Show Spoiler [long post] +Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. I'm not sure you realize that nowhere in your post did you disprove the fact that feminism is first and foremost about wanting equality between the sexes on the political, economical and social levels. Your extremely incomplete list of prominent first and second waves feminist thinkers certainly did not disprove it, and your cherry-picking of a few quotes on one feminist organization's website didn't disprove it (in fact, if you take a look at that organization's "what we want" section, you'll see that what they declare they want is precisely equality between the sexes). It's one thing to disagree with the kind of "us vs them" mentality they're pushing forward on their website, but that doesn't change the fact that the ultimate objective is equality. Likewise, I'm not sure where you got the idea that the use of concepts like that of "patriarchy" was somehow antithetical to a desire to achieve equality - precisely by fighting against patriarchal systems. Like Stratos_speAr rightly said, feminism is defined as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities", "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes", etc. You're free to disagree with whatever feminist authors and organizations you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the core objective of feminism is to achieve equality between the sexes. I'm not sure the thread's original post warrants transforming this thread into a discussion about what feminism is and isn't, though - this is supposed to be a thread about sexist harassment in video games. the second definition of the word in that dictionary ( which you conveniently left out) is: "organized activity in support of women's rights and interests". that doesn't sound to equal to me. i just can't believe feminism is about equality just because it is called femi-n-ism. you can call it oversimplified misogyny but it's just basic logic for me. It is called feminism because women have historically been, as a group, denied the political, economical and social independence and legitimacy that men have enjoyed. The bulk of the movement has therefore been targeted at addressing the discriminations that women suffer from as women, in order to help them have the same rights and opportunities as men. This doesn't mean that men aren't also affected by, for example, stereotypical gender roles, but it does mean that it is women and not men who have historically and presently been put in a subordinate position because of their gender in patriarchal systems. Since feminism is about achieving equality, though, you'll find plenty of feminist scholars and activists also deconstructing and fighting against discriminations and negative gender roles that apply to men. i have no problem with women having their own movement that deals with women issues, called feminism but every time i see a dude like you pushing the 'woman-man' equality agenda over and over and over i can't help but see you strapping on some C4 and randomly start blowing men up just because ... fuck it and why not; Ex: in a random community, there's like 50 men and 30 women(thing which is totally against the QUOTA) so 20 men must die to achieve equality. you are a scary extremist. it's just how you look to me. The fact that you see feminism as extreme and an attack on you is a -You- problem. In other words, it's entirely your fault for having this radical perception of feminism where there are plenty of feminists that don't approach it like that at all. Considering that a majority (referencing the huffingtonpost article here) considers feminism extreme I would say it is an issue of feminism and not of any individual. There are plenty of feminists who actively fight against men trying to obtain equal rights to those of women for example in the justice system and especially when it comes to child custody laws. The no-true-Scotsmen argument of those feminists not being actual feminists is hilariously bad because why is your definition of feminism any more valid than theirs? Probably because I never said that they weren't feminists. If you want to accuse me of a logical fallacy, you should probably know what you're talking about. What I've been saying is that they aren't all feminists. You don't define a group by its radical parts, especially when there have been feminists critiquing other feminists for being too radical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#Critique_of_feminism_and_anti-feminismNot only that, your interpretation of that HuffPost poll is ridiculously simplified. you are claiming the simplification without giving a better explanation.
How about an explanation like almost everything else in the world? One that is actually slightly more nuanced?
Not only can the public's perception of something hardly be taken to actually define it, but his interpretation does nothing to address the role of the media or other prominent figures/groups in shaping or distorting the public's image of feminism, and the media has been pretty harshly criticized on how it depicts feminism.
To ignore those influences and just say, "it's an issue of feminism that so many think that feminism is extreme" is just lazy.
And not all gamers are harassing women, but for some reason the entire gaming community is toxic... Please tell me why one group should be defined by it's radicals whilst the other shouldn't? And what is your interpretation of the HuffPost poll?
I don't really see a lot of people here arguing that the entire gaming community is toxic. I definitely am not. In fact, I've been arguing the opposite, repeatedly saying that not every game has to be changed to depict everyone a certain way or that every community is bad, but that the overall trend is negative.
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I think the gaming community was less toxic when we were all playing on private servers. Every tiny community self moderated through kicking and banning players they didn’t want to deal with. I think the issue has become more pronounced since the control of the servers have shifted to larger companies that do not moderate as strictly.
The removal of the kick feature from games has been a big loss for us all. Sure it could be abused, but there was always another server to play on. Increased moderation would go a long way to addressing the issue online at least.
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On March 19 2015 23:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 23:08 Hryul wrote:On March 19 2015 23:06 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 22:56 Ghostcom wrote:On March 19 2015 22:51 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 15:53 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 15:19 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 15:01 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 14:29 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:[quote] + Show Spoiler [long post] +Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. I'm not sure you realize that nowhere in your post did you disprove the fact that feminism is first and foremost about wanting equality between the sexes on the political, economical and social levels. Your extremely incomplete list of prominent first and second waves feminist thinkers certainly did not disprove it, and your cherry-picking of a few quotes on one feminist organization's website didn't disprove it (in fact, if you take a look at that organization's "what we want" section, you'll see that what they declare they want is precisely equality between the sexes). It's one thing to disagree with the kind of "us vs them" mentality they're pushing forward on their website, but that doesn't change the fact that the ultimate objective is equality. Likewise, I'm not sure where you got the idea that the use of concepts like that of "patriarchy" was somehow antithetical to a desire to achieve equality - precisely by fighting against patriarchal systems. Like Stratos_speAr rightly said, feminism is defined as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities", "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes", etc. You're free to disagree with whatever feminist authors and organizations you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the core objective of feminism is to achieve equality between the sexes. I'm not sure the thread's original post warrants transforming this thread into a discussion about what feminism is and isn't, though - this is supposed to be a thread about sexist harassment in video games. the second definition of the word in that dictionary ( which you conveniently left out) is: "organized activity in support of women's rights and interests". that doesn't sound to equal to me. i just can't believe feminism is about equality just because it is called femi-n-ism. you can call it oversimplified misogyny but it's just basic logic for me. It is called feminism because women have historically been, as a group, denied the political, economical and social independence and legitimacy that men have enjoyed. The bulk of the movement has therefore been targeted at addressing the discriminations that women suffer from as women, in order to help them have the same rights and opportunities as men. This doesn't mean that men aren't also affected by, for example, stereotypical gender roles, but it does mean that it is women and not men who have historically and presently been put in a subordinate position because of their gender in patriarchal systems. Since feminism is about achieving equality, though, you'll find plenty of feminist scholars and activists also deconstructing and fighting against discriminations and negative gender roles that apply to men. i have no problem with women having their own movement that deals with women issues, called feminism but every time i see a dude like you pushing the 'woman-man' equality agenda over and over and over i can't help but see you strapping on some C4 and randomly start blowing men up just because ... fuck it and why not; Ex: in a random community, there's like 50 men and 30 women(thing which is totally against the QUOTA) so 20 men must die to achieve equality. you are a scary extremist. it's just how you look to me. The fact that you see feminism as extreme and an attack on you is a -You- problem. In other words, it's entirely your fault for having this radical perception of feminism where there are plenty of feminists that don't approach it like that at all. Considering that a majority (referencing the huffingtonpost article here) considers feminism extreme I would say it is an issue of feminism and not of any individual. There are plenty of feminists who actively fight against men trying to obtain equal rights to those of women for example in the justice system and especially when it comes to child custody laws. The no-true-Scotsmen argument of those feminists not being actual feminists is hilariously bad because why is your definition of feminism any more valid than theirs? Probably because I never said that they weren't feminists. If you want to accuse me of a logical fallacy, you should probably know what you're talking about. What I've been saying is that they aren't all feminists. You don't define a group by its radical parts, especially when there have been feminists critiquing other feminists for being too radical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#Critique_of_feminism_and_anti-feminismNot only that, your interpretation of that HuffPost poll is ridiculously simplified. you are claiming the simplification without giving a better explanation. How about an explanation like almost everything else in the world? One that is actually slightly more nuanced? Not only can the public's perception of something hardly be taken to actually define it, but his interpretation does nothing to address the role of the media or other prominent figures/groups in shaping or distorting the public's image of feminism, and the media has been pretty harshly criticized on how it depicts feminism. To ignore those influences and just say, "it's an issue of feminism that so many think that feminism is extreme" is just lazy. Show nested quote +And not all gamers are harassing women, but for some reason the entire gaming community is toxic... Please tell me why one group should be defined by it's radicals whilst the other shouldn't? And what is your interpretation of the HuffPost poll? I don't really see a lot of people here arguing that the entire gaming community is toxic. I definitely am not. In fact, I've been arguing the opposite, repeatedly saying that not every game has to be changed to depict everyone a certain way or that every community is bad, but that the overall trend is negative.
You are such a hypocrite. You make xM(Z solely responsible for his perception of feminism, yet you absolve feminism for all responsibility of how it is being perceived. If you are going to blame the media for how feminism is being perceived, shouldn't that absolve xM(Z? But oh no, that was entirely on him.
And in a post above yours, a poster is arguing that ALL men are sexists, no matter what they do. Yet I don't see him arguing that EVERY woman is sexist because they are not actively fighting for mens rights to for example child custody.
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On March 19 2015 23:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On March 19 2015 23:08 Hryul wrote:On March 19 2015 23:06 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 22:56 Ghostcom wrote:On March 19 2015 22:51 Stratos_speAr wrote:On March 19 2015 15:53 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 15:19 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 15:01 xM(Z wrote:On March 19 2015 14:29 kwizach wrote:On March 19 2015 13:39 ninazerg wrote:[quote] + Show Spoiler [long post] +Well, since we've evoked ISIS, I guess it's time to talk about Nazis. "Some Nazis are saying X, so Nazism is defined by X!" <- oh damn. So how do we define Nazism? Or Communism? Or philosophy? Well, let's take Communism, for example. Although the roots of Communism are unknown, there are texts like Sir Thomas More's Utopia and Plato's The Republic that describe Communist societies. The idea of a Communist society being a reality outside of monasteries did not materialize until the advent of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto. Then you had the writings of Vladimir Ilyich (Lenin) which expanded on the ideas of Marx to create the school of thought called Leninism. The philosophies are actually important here. Anton Drexler's philosophies were incorporated into the newsletters of his organization, which later then became a major political party in Germany. He became a mentor to Adolf Hitler, who then published the same sort of antisemitic rhetoric prescribed by Drexler. Now, I wouldn't compare most feminists to nazis, although some people have combined the terms. The comparison I am making is quite simple: To understand a philosophy, you have to understand the writings of its leaders and founders. If someone does not understand a philosophy and then declares themselves to be a follower of said philosophy, then the meaning of the philosophy does not change based on their predispositions. For example, if someone says they're a Christian, but says they don't believe in the resurrection of Christ, then they're ignorant of their own ineptitude for comprehending the philosophy they purport to follow. If you accept the title of a Christian, you accept the writings of its founders and the philosophy that goes with it. If you decide "Well, people can't judge me", well, think again. Nowhere will any serious Christian take you seriously if you go by this premise. In regards to feminism, the "Plato's The Republic" to modern-day feminism would be like Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and maybe even Alice Paul. And I say 'maybe even' because Alice Paul wanted an organization like the UK's Suffragettes, who were in competition with another women's rights organization in Britain called the Suffragists. Much like in Britain, the US had Susan B. Anthony (and Elizabeth Cady Stanton) who founded the National Woman's Suffrage Association and Lucy Stone's opposing American Woman's Suffrage Association. Most history books kind of bury the fact these two groups hated each other, and focus on praising Susan B. Anthony, who insisted on becoming President of the merger between the two organizations, once they finally decided to compromise. The rest, as they say, is history. Susan B. Anthony became the heroine to women across the U.S., and Lucy Stone fades into obscurity, despite having done most of the leg-work. The 'Second Wave' of feminism came in the 1960s when Betty Friedan authored The Feminist Mystique. This work, like Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto with Communist literature, is considered to set the bar for every other major feminist publication since then. Honestly, the book itself is not that 'radical', especially considering how radical Friedan was. She had been involved in the Communist Party in the U.S., and was prejudiced against gay men, and refused to support lesbian activists. This is not being said to assail her character, but because it is a fact that she believed, at the time, that gay men came from homes where men spent too much time with their mothers. Her book also criticized pop culture and the depiction of women as happy housewives - which was actually not the case in many instances, nor was it perpetuated in all media. I don't know of the intention behind it was, because Friedan was not a housewife; far from it, but her work was what many consider to be the rebirth of feminism in the United States. So who influenced Betty Friedan? A French author named Simone de Beauvoir. De Beauvoir was a co-founder of the newsletter New Feminist Issues, alongside Christine Delphy. And this, my friend, is where the real beginning of Second-Wave Feminism took root. Christine Delphy pioneered the concepts of the Patriarchy and Privilege as a central theme in the social repression of women. These themes would later be pivotal in the writings and philosophies of feminist authors and leaders like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Judith Brown, Robin Morgan, Melissa Farley, Catherine MacKinnon, Valerie Solanas, Anne Koedt, and Janice Raymond. All the ideas about male privilege, males oppressing women, patriarchy, and so on, come from authors like these who are pivotal to Second-Wave Feminism. If you read some of the stuff they've written, you might only be angry, but sickened. If you want to say "Oh, it's only a few feminists here and there." then you're not being realistic about what feminism is, which is a blame-males-for-all-problems philosophy. Let me quote something from the NWL's website: Men as a class benefit from male privilege: getting paid more than us, being free from harassment when walking down the street, even getting an extra hour of sleep while we get up early with the kids or stay up into the night folding laundry. Even men we might think of as pro-feminist, or "good guys" do sexist things—not because they don't understand, or are inherently evil, but because they get something positive, some benefits or kickbacks from male supremacy. Men have an authority and legitimacy simply by virtue of being male. They don’t do as much housework or childcare, or send out the thank you cards. They get promoted over us because they don’t ever have to leave early or miss work due to a sick child. Come Thanksgiving most men sit on the couch and watch football while the women clean up—after cooking all day. And we all know we don’t clean for fun. These are just some of the many benefits an individual man might get from male supremacy. So by defending feminism, you are still a sexist, "simply by the virtue of being male". And you never do as much housework or childcare (cuz there are no single fathers), and of course, you never have to miss work due to a sick child. Right? We also know that men use their power over us in both subtle and overt ways to keep us in line—from a smile and a compliment when we conform to the female dress code, to the threat of a beating or worse if we talk back or dare to walk down the street alone at night. In other words, being nice is you subtly asserting your power over women, and simply less overt than beating us senselessly. RIGHT? Men will not give up their male privilege without a fight. After a feminist revolution, no man will be able to use economic necessity to extract compliance from a woman--we will be truly independent. Men won’t give up all the goodies, big and small, that come from male supremacy unless we as women join together and fight. The idea that men have all the power and that it must be taken is not a strawman argument against feminism, and anyone who claims to be a feminist needs to be educated on what feminism is and what kind of philosophy feminists have proposed. What you're looking at is a radical philosophy which marginalizes you as a man and makes you the enemy of all women by default, and I'm not okay with that. But if you wanna stand behind this bullshit, be my guest. Show nested quote + As for the poll you linked, it's surprising, considering how many readers of the Huffington Post are predominantly liberal, but still reinforces my point that you can be pro-equality while not being a feminist.
Only if you refuse to use words by their definitions. The fact is that feminism is simply defined as supporting equal rights for women when compared to men. Anything else is baggage that ends up being a particular qualifier to feminism, and doesn't define feminism as a whole. All you're doing is purposefully misrepresenting the word feminism in an attempt to discredit anyone who identifies as a feminist. It's lazy and intellectually dishonest. Intellectual dishonesty and laziness together are when you claim to support something without doing any research. I'm not sure you realize that nowhere in your post did you disprove the fact that feminism is first and foremost about wanting equality between the sexes on the political, economical and social levels. Your extremely incomplete list of prominent first and second waves feminist thinkers certainly did not disprove it, and your cherry-picking of a few quotes on one feminist organization's website didn't disprove it (in fact, if you take a look at that organization's "what we want" section, you'll see that what they declare they want is precisely equality between the sexes). It's one thing to disagree with the kind of "us vs them" mentality they're pushing forward on their website, but that doesn't change the fact that the ultimate objective is equality. Likewise, I'm not sure where you got the idea that the use of concepts like that of "patriarchy" was somehow antithetical to a desire to achieve equality - precisely by fighting against patriarchal systems. Like Stratos_speAr rightly said, feminism is defined as "the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities", "the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes", etc. You're free to disagree with whatever feminist authors and organizations you want, but that doesn't change the fact that the core objective of feminism is to achieve equality between the sexes. I'm not sure the thread's original post warrants transforming this thread into a discussion about what feminism is and isn't, though - this is supposed to be a thread about sexist harassment in video games. the second definition of the word in that dictionary ( which you conveniently left out) is: "organized activity in support of women's rights and interests". that doesn't sound to equal to me. i just can't believe feminism is about equality just because it is called femi-n-ism. you can call it oversimplified misogyny but it's just basic logic for me. It is called feminism because women have historically been, as a group, denied the political, economical and social independence and legitimacy that men have enjoyed. The bulk of the movement has therefore been targeted at addressing the discriminations that women suffer from as women, in order to help them have the same rights and opportunities as men. This doesn't mean that men aren't also affected by, for example, stereotypical gender roles, but it does mean that it is women and not men who have historically and presently been put in a subordinate position because of their gender in patriarchal systems. Since feminism is about achieving equality, though, you'll find plenty of feminist scholars and activists also deconstructing and fighting against discriminations and negative gender roles that apply to men. i have no problem with women having their own movement that deals with women issues, called feminism but every time i see a dude like you pushing the 'woman-man' equality agenda over and over and over i can't help but see you strapping on some C4 and randomly start blowing men up just because ... fuck it and why not; Ex: in a random community, there's like 50 men and 30 women(thing which is totally against the QUOTA) so 20 men must die to achieve equality. you are a scary extremist. it's just how you look to me. The fact that you see feminism as extreme and an attack on you is a -You- problem. In other words, it's entirely your fault for having this radical perception of feminism where there are plenty of feminists that don't approach it like that at all. Considering that a majority (referencing the huffingtonpost article here) considers feminism extreme I would say it is an issue of feminism and not of any individual. There are plenty of feminists who actively fight against men trying to obtain equal rights to those of women for example in the justice system and especially when it comes to child custody laws. The no-true-Scotsmen argument of those feminists not being actual feminists is hilariously bad because why is your definition of feminism any more valid than theirs? Probably because I never said that they weren't feminists. If you want to accuse me of a logical fallacy, you should probably know what you're talking about. What I've been saying is that they aren't all feminists. You don't define a group by its radical parts, especially when there have been feminists critiquing other feminists for being too radical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism#Critique_of_feminism_and_anti-feminismNot only that, your interpretation of that HuffPost poll is ridiculously simplified. you are claiming the simplification without giving a better explanation. How about an explanation like almost everything else in the world? One that is actually slightly more nuanced? Not only can the public's perception of something hardly be taken to actually define it, but his interpretation does nothing to address the role of the media or other prominent figures/groups in shaping or distorting the public's image of feminism, and the media has been pretty harshly criticized on how it depicts feminism. To ignore those influences and just say, "it's an issue of feminism that so many think that feminism is extreme" is just lazy. Funny that you bring up the negative influence of media in the depiction of feminism. I just stumbled upon this tweet
from Jessica Valenti. wiki: In 2011, The Guardian, where she works as a daily columnist, named Valenti as one of their "top 100 women" for her work to bring the feminist movement online.
So this is a feminist working in the media.
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