females, feminists and femininity.

Geez, since when are men capable of answering the essence of this thread (see above), and in such a virile way?! I mean, not to be discriminatory or anything, but most of us are living in patriarchal societies and some people's views could be askew.

Premable: I am a female and will weigh in as such. First, let me tell you that I resent the word feminism. I am up in arms that a word exists to separate women from the rest of human kind simply because they want to experience all things human. (There was a time that men purported in court that women and children were not humans.) No woman has ever been just an insular incubator or toy, and to suggest that she may not enjoy all that life has to offer or even seek that out as everyone else in an equal way, is simply inhumane. We dont need to compete with men. We fucking bear the children, an endeavor no man has accomplished, and often we raise them. We create peace and families, and make the world go on while being darling and fab, and sticking our asses up for their enjoyment. You people piss me off, whoever you are. Fuck off and let us be who we are. Gawd.

My answers to OP questions:

What are your earliest memories of gender awareness? I think early childhood, when things such as wrapping paper had one thing for girls and another for boys, or the colors that were one each. I was certainly aware that men were considered different than girls in that they got bigger portions and so forth, and when mom would make cocktails for dad and herself when he got home from work. By age 10, I was reading the newspaper and knew without a doubt of the gender difference.

What were the norms for gender in your family and your community? Mom stayed home in servitude to dad and raised the children. She eventually went to work part-time when the youngest was in school (me). This traditional upbringing was the norm in my community. I knew of 1 mother who was divorced, and it was talked about.

How have your attitudes toward gender been influenced by your personal experiences with your parents and family? Servitude, servitude, servitude.

How have your attitudes toward gender been influenced by your personal experiences with your friendships? I like women who live rugged lives, whether than be wilderness, urban, or even homebound.

How have your attitudes toward gender been influenced by your personal experiences with your romantic relationships? The 2 most influential relationships in my life with men include my ex and the Big Dog. My ex admired women and was in the equal opportunity camp. The Big one, I believe, doesnt like women and would probably eat one if he could. He colored my Preamble quite a bit.

How have your attitudes toward gender been influenced by your personal experiences with other experiences? I was fired from a job only once, and it was blatant sexual discrimination. My child married a transgendered person; my other child actually asked her patriarch priest if she could attend the wedding. Working with therapy clients I see the hurt that happens when a girl is treated casually as some thing other than your sister human, and the lifelong damage it does.

 

Step 1: Semantically define your position in such a way as to be unassailable.
Step 2: Move the Goalposts to prevent counterexamples or disagreement with your semantics
Step 3: Attack anyone who disagrees with you for being against your semantically redefined position in step 1... IE "Why do you hate america?!"
Step 4: Make your argument circular so you can just keep going in circles whenever someone tries to disagree anyway

Step 1: Feminism means equality! Why do you hate equality? Are you a sexist?
Step 2: Sexist women who self-identify as true feminists and act like hateful bigots aren't REAL scotsmen Feminists. They're fringe extremists, you can't hold the majority of feminists who have not once stood up to, rebuked, opposed, protested, or even wrote an article denouncing these people responsible for the extremists they tacitly condone and support.
Step 3: Feminism means Equality! If you oppose feminism you hate equality! You're a sexist! The ONLY way you can be pro-equality is if you're pro-feminism and all of the politics and ideology that come with that! You're either with us or against us!
Step 4: The fact that anyone even talks about self-identifying feminists who do things like pull fire alarms and sing "cry me a river" at suicide awareness events, send death threats, murder peoples' dogs, is proof that society is deeply misogynist. It's misogyny to recognize these things are real, unapposed, often defended, and self-identified as Feminist by the people behind them! Feminism means equality! If they're feminists and you oppose them you must hate equality!


"Feminism means equality period full stop" is no different than saying "Republicans believe in fiscal responsibility full stop" and completely ignoring all the OTHER fundamental planks of the Republican platform. Just as one can believe in a sound fiscal policy and still vehemently oppose many aspects of the Republican platform one can also believe strongly in gender equality and vehemently oppose many aspects of Feminist political and academic theory. What you're doing is no different than Republicans claiming that people who oppose the Religious Right or Tea Party "Hate America" and "Hate Fiscal Responsibility".

Accepting that these people exist and refusing to give you a free pass on not only your absolute failure to do a damn thing about them but also your active DEFENSE of them when others DO try to do something, or even merely refuse to let you pretend they don't exist, is not proof of a "deep seated" misogyny. You can't claim that someone disagreeing with you is automatic proof that you're right, it's absurd on it's face.

What IS evidence of a deep seated societal bias is how the moment someone tries to disagree even the slightest with ANY aspect of your political ideology or any of its adherents no matter how violent and extreme you immediately devolve to screaming "Why do you hate america women?!" and similar absurdities.

Feminism the political and academic ideology does not have a monopoly on truth, gender equality, or morality and people can oppose a political and academic ideology without automatically being evil sexist straw misogynists.

 

If you don't believe this is the case, then this post hasn't been very effective at pointing out your case. Also, I didn't see an accusation or implication of sexism in @Charlatan 's post, just a disagreement in terms. You know, to debate.

I don't think anyone is claiming feminists that act like asshats aren't real feminists. They're just not representative of the larger whole. The lack of denial does not imply condonation or support. I'm an American, and if my lack of opposition to every ignorant thing Americans did was taken for tacit support, I wouldn't be able to get anything done because I would spend all my time defending myself.

Again, I didn't see that stated or implied. Please elaborate.

No, those are shitty things done by shitty people. Shitty people exist in all camps. I've watched the "cry me a river" video. She was pretty obnoxious. You know what's more obnoxious? The fact that she received threats of rape and death after the event by MRA advocates. Again, shitty people in all subsets of people.

No one has said that you can't support gender equality while opposing the "Feminist political and academic theory." Have you done that? So far in this thread I've seen you oppose a website based on feminism and argue with members. I haven't seen a well though opposition to a political and academic theory.

I think you lose sight of the fact that we're discussing these issues here, in this forum, and that we are not an active representation of all feminist views out there. If people here actively defend shitty behavior, then call them on it. If people here deny that there are in fact repugnant feminists, then by all means discuss. No one here has pulled the "Why do you hate america women?!" card. @Charlatan brought up the popularization of a bit of vocabulary and what that might signify about our culture. That was a point of discussion that your rant quoted but absolutely failed to address.

 

Don't forget generous heaps of gish galloping, strawmanning, and projecting every time the issue of gender relations comes up.

 

Many, many thanks for introducing me to this term. I see this phenomenon quite often; I'm glad to find a term for it.

 

Indeed. Some have such a bug up their ass about certain topics that they can't see the forest for the trees.

 

Gish Gallop

Named for the debate tactic created by creationist shill Duane Gish, a Gish Gallop involves spewing so much bullshit in such a short span on that your opponent can’t address let alone counter all of it. To make matters worse a Gish Gallop will often have one or more 'talking points' that has a tiny core of truth to it, making the person rebutting it spend even more time debunking it in order to explain that, yes, it's not totally false but the Galloper is distorting/misusing/misstating the actual situation. A true Gish Gallop generally has two traits.​

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1) The factual and logical content of the Gish Gallop is pure bullshit and anybody knowledgeable and informed on the subject would recognize it as such almost instantly. That is, the Gish Gallop is designed to appeal to and deceive precisely those sorts of people who are most in need of honest factual education.​

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2) The points are all ones that the Galloper either knows, or damn well should know, are totally bullshit. With the slimier users of the Gish Gallop, like Gish himself, its a near certainty that the points are chosen not just because the Galloper knows that they're bullshit, but because the Galloper is deliberately trying to shovel as much bullshit into as small a space as possible in order to overwhelm his opponent with sheer volume and bamboozle any audience members with a facade of scholarly acumen and factual knowledge.​

​

Thanks @MSD for introducing the term to me!
I like this description.

 

I haven't read the whole thread, but was brought up by a strong liberal mother who always talked openly of feminism, and gender identity. As a young teen, I read Greer, Jong, Hollander, all the classics of the 70s gender politics movement.

I have a daughter, and have tried to never shy away from teaching her that gender should not determine value, but that she may have to push herself to the front of the queue past men, to get the recognition she deserves in life.

My point is, by upbringing, and for my family, I think of myself as a privileged man, who understands that the privilege was not sought, but has helped me, but is wrong regardless.

I self identify as some type of feminist therefore.

I was shocked recently to be told I was not entitled to this opinion by a young woman who insisted that only women (and her definition of women includes women born as men, regardless of their point in their personal gender journey) can understand gender politics. As a man , I am apparently INCAPABLE of even having an opinion.

I was shocked.

 

Well guys, I'm not shocked.
Depending on your age, you've probably experienced very different attitudes towards the sexes interpersonally and on the broader societal or institutional level than I did as a young woman.
I was 12 years-old when women in the US gained the right to terminate their unwanted pregnancies legally. It was also around that time that it was mandated by law that girl's physical fitness programs had to be funded as much as the boy's.
This might sound like old news and in fact, it is. But it seems like yesterday that I started to fret for both me and my female friends that in a few years we could get pregnant and then what? It was such a relief to know that if it were to happen we probably wouldn't die from it.
I myself took on a moderately radical feminist viewpoint because when you are standing at base level and you have a lot of steps to climb, you need to get attention in any way you can.
At one point I actually didn't believe that men had a right to have any say in a woman's reproductive choices and I said so.
Because time has passed and there are children such as @Daniel_ whose mothers were great role models for the best that both men and women could be, I've modified my stance as well.
I'm glad we've evolved to a point in the US where radical feminism seems unnecessary though I still very much worry about reproductive rights for the daughters and granddaughters of my generation.

 

While I can understand the viewpoint, it doesn't win many over to the cause, and I would argue that the change in society is the cause for a need for a change in tactics. I'm not as well read on the topic and the history and influences of feminism as some others in this thread, I'm just going on my feeling of right and wrong, empathy, and logic. Attitudes like the one that @Daniel_ encountered could take someone who's on the side of promoting women's equality and alienate them. Men coming to identify with the cause seems to be essential to any long term change in society.

 

As many have pointed out, Feminism isn't a monolith. Assholes and misguided people exist in all walks of life.

 

Actually that's the WEIRD thing: 82% of those surveyed believe "men and women should be equal in every way" regardless of their own gender, but 72% of people surveyed refuse to describe themselves as feminists and 37% believe it's a negative term. The rhetoric that people oppose Feminism because they don't believe in gender equality, or that people by and large don't believe in gender equality in and of itself, simply doesn't hold up to the facts.

 

I'm facepalming because originally that last post had another 2 paragraphs going into exactly that. I probably should have just left them in.

Saying "Feminism is equality period full stop" is no different than saying "Republicans stand for Fiscal Conservativism and Personal Liberty", it's a politicized idealistic oversimplification that forces people into a false dichotomy. I don't think saying people reject big-F-Feminism because it's "widely misunderstood" is a healthy approach. It operates on the assumption that people don't call themselves feminists because they're just too ignorant or stupid to know better. That approach completely discounts that people can have an informed disagreement with the ideology and more importantly actions of organised Feminism while still being ardently pro-equality.

The average person may not have a bachelor's level historical understanding of all three waves and their historical underpinnings but they're not blind or stupid.

 

This is a much better laid out argument that I can understand, thank you. I'll chime in as a sort of devil's advocate/average guy who has no education of any sort in any kind of feminism. Hell, I see you guys using fancy 2nd/3rd wave terms and it's just so many words to me. In an attempt to be at least a little educated in the topic here that I was chiming in on, I did standard research: I Googled. The search term 'moderate feminism doesn't return many substantive results. 'Modern feminism' doesn't do much better. What exactly is modern feminism? What does feminism mean? In using the title, does someone actually associate themselves with a defined movement or ideology? Are so-called 'radical feminists' the only ones using the term to the point of defining it to society? And if that's not the case, are moderate feminists responsible for defending the title?

I actually don't oppose to people defending women's rights as opposed to gender equality. There's a lot of injustices in society that need attention, and deciding to put your efforts into women's rights is specialization, not disregard of other wrongs. There's still racial discrimination of many different types, but I don't hold it against someone if they work towards advancing the rights of blacks or Hispanics, you can't work towards everything. My question is, is the feminist movement still a thing, and if so, is it positive?

Many people have identified as feminists in this thread (myself included). Are we really? @Shadowex3 may have a point in calling me a supporter of equal rights as opposed to a feminist. What have I done to be part of a movement? I've never gone to a rally. I've never made a special effort to go out and raise awareness of women's issues. I've never gone out of my way to champion a cause. I just support being decent to each other. Is claiming the title really enough to be a feminist, and by using that title, would I be tying myself to a more encompassing ideology than I understand?

 

Feminism is not a monolithic entity or single organized movement, it's a collection of ideologies that share the goal of ending inequality between women and men. It's hard to sum up quickly because it's a deep subject where everything has caveats and requires further explanation. The best way I can put it succinctly and directly is that men are considered the default in society. For a really basic understanding, the Wikipedia articles for Feminism, Patriarchy, Privilege (Social Inequality,) Intersectionality, Womanism, First, Second, and Third Wave Feminism, Radical Feminism, Liberal Feminism, andthe Feminist Sex Wars should get you a general idea of what it's about. Do the usual Wikipedia thing and click on anything you're not sure about and at least read the intro, you'll probably end up going through most of the different ideologies and major figures that way. Intersectionality and Womanism are good ones to understand that it's not simply women's issues and that a multitude of cultural biases and privileges harm society.

There are differences of thought on men and feminism, but you'll find most people who identify as feminists accept male feminists and male allies as part of the movement. Feminism also addresses issues that affect men and that patriarchy is ultimately harmful to men as well as women even if the systemic bias tends to affect men more positively and women more negatively. Macho culture, for example, ties into patriarchy by enforcing male gender roles on boys and men with the implied premise that being a man is better than being a woman.

I think I'll leave it there because otherwise I'm going to end up writing a whole essay for you.

 

I was going to qualify my identification as a feminist by reciting some of the things I've done. Certainly, I could've done more. Thanks to @mixedmedia starting this thread and the invaluable contributions by several members, I've reactivated my interest in and therefore self-education about modern feminism.

My mother's mother was a suffragette and she raised my mother to be very pro-female, if not a bit anti-male. My early experiences with men and women of my age coloured my early thinking. In high school there was even an informal, somewhat not-serious, man-haters club. I didn't join because I really like(d) some men and certainly, I enjoyed sex with them.

Between ages 16-18, I volunteered two evenings a week in a nearby city at Planned Parenthood. Instead of paying someone to do the vitals on clients they had me do it and I co-ran peer groups in teenage sexuality as well.

My feminism was very rooted in having reproductive rights. We did not do abortions at our clinic but anyone that needed gynecological or birth control wellness services got it. Guys were invited to the peer groups, had their Q's answered and were given free condoms and instructions.

When I left Connecticut for California survival was utmost and there was not time or energy to volunteer.

The next time I volunteered was after I moved here to Illinois when I was trained and performed the duties of a rape victim's advocate (volunteer). I struggled with not blaming men at times with the most difficult time being after answering a middle-of-the night call for a 4-y.o. rape victim. At the time, I (privately) cursed the things that men do to women and girls. Now I've gotten past that about 99% of the time and when I'm at my wit's end I curse what humans can do to one another.

My advocacy continued with more volunteering at a homeless women's shelter. That ended when funding ran out. Since then, I've signed petitions, given contributions and have written a couple of on articles on my blog as well.

I'm not fond of labels, never have been, but I am enamoured of being informed so I'll follow @MSD's generous suggestions and read up on what is current.

 

1st, 2nd, and 3rd Wave feminism are like the different periods of Greek or Roman history. Liberal, Moderate, and Radical Feminism (often shortened to Lib, Mod, and Radfem) are different ideological strains throughout those time periods. "Modern" is a colloquial term just referring to the present day.

After that it gets more subjective.

To get started I wouldn't actually recommend wikipedia, it tends to overcomplicate things while somehow failing to actually explain them. Finally Femnism 101is imho the best beginner's resource for understanding Feminism's ideological tenets and theories as written from their own perspective. At the same time being written from their own self perspective it's about as balanced as expecting any political ideology to describe itself. You can get an alternate point of view from the apty named Feminist Critics, though you'll have to go through the archives since they tend to discuss news and events as they occur. I recommend starting with their series on what they call Gynocentric Feminism . They're also strongly slanted in favor of their own position, but since it's got numerous contributors they aren't above introspective criticism of their own works.

For a more middleground path between those two there's the Rationalwiki articles on Feminism which are definitely pro-feminist, but at the same time give Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists and other extremists a solid reaming.

The phrase "Feminism is not a monolith" is a serious understatement, especially since the internet took off.

This is where you'll get wildly different answers depending on who you ask, even inside of the Feminism umbrella. There are feminists who would say "congratulations you're a feminist", feminists who would say you can be an "ally" but never a true feminist, and feminists who would simply hate you for being a man.

On the other side you've got all the disparate groups who believe in equality but also oppose Feminism. Some of them believe Feminism is inherently anti-equality, some believe Feminism used to be primarily pro-equality but has been corrupted by extremists, and a lot fall somewhere along a continuum of agreeing with some branches of Feminism and opposing others. Some people are so fed up with both "sides" that they've invented Egalitarianism an umbrella term for people who believe in "equality period full stop" but not any of the other ideological tenets of any of the groups.

Where it gets ugly is how each end of the spectrum talks about the middle and the other side. A majority of self-identifying ideologues on both sides believe they hold a monopoly on morality and truth, basically it's not possible to be anything else and still support equality. Feminist ideologues argue you must be a misogynist woman-hating fedora MRA insert-insult-here and MRA's argue you must be a misandrist man-hating feminazi.

The problem is the issues both care about are empirically demonstrable and legitimate, but the ideology and rhetoric they surround themselves with is inherently incompatible with coexistence. So you wind up with two sides that uniquely among ideologues have the strength of conviction that comes from truly legitimate grievances, but wrapped in vicious partisanship. The end result is a cycle of increasing polarization to the point that each side is unwilling to admit when they're wrong on something, or worse that the other side is right. Watching both sides is sometimes like watching bizarro world, I see things like my Feminist friends ranting about how stupid and prejudiced divorce and family courts are and then turn around and see MRAs blaming feminists for alimony and custody when they're already on the same side.

Which is imho just fucking tragic, because if both movements as a whole just dropped the ideological baggage I don't think they'd even consider each other seperate groups anymore. If Feminists just started disowning and counter-protesting Radfems, held a slutwalk sized event about forced-envelopment not being legally recognized as rape, and recognized the gender parity of domestic violence victimization they'd probably gut the entire MRA movement. If MRAs dropped the obsession over false rape claims, their own lopsided view of rape culture, and kicked out their own extremists they'd probably wind up with (Lib and Mod) Feminists joining their events instead of Radfems attacking them.