When did feminism go completely crazy?

[jackelgull]

As long as feminism is a female only preserve which I as a straight male cannot enter, then why do I care? At the very least, give men a token voice in the conversation before laughing them out. That way we have more of a stake in the issue.

 

[warpus]

A social movement founded and designed to deal with women's issues is faulty because it doesn't address men's issues.

What a load of cow pies.

I'm fine with feminism being all about women's issues. But some people seem to say that it's a movement designed to promote equality between the genders, aspiring to address gender issues no matter what the gender is.

But based on my personal experience, that doesn't seem to be the case. So there's some contradiction there somewhere, or I just don't get out enough.

Say what? You've never seen a feminist discuss child abuse? Domestic violence? The perniciousness of assumptions about gender roles in family life, the workplace and society at large? The construction of masculinity as being violent, sexually aggressive, suppressing emotions, and how those things are alienating and limiting for many men?

Let me rephrase it this way:

Whenever I've seen a feminist tackle or discuss a gender inequality issue - it has been always framed around the conceptual idea of women's rights. That concept seems to always sit at the core, while all other considerations are built around it.

I have honestly only heard a feminist frame an issue as a "Male issue" 3 or 4 times, ever. And each time it happened it was always someone complaining that feminism doesn't do enough to address issues from that point of view.

That's my experience with feminism, so take it for what it is.

 

[JollyRoger]

As long as feminism is a female only preserve which I as a straight male cannot enter, then why do I care? At the very least, give men a token voice in the conversation before laughing them out. That way we have more of a stake in the issue.

Do you not have a mother or wife or daughter or sister?

 

[Arwon]

Let me rephrase it this way:

Whenever I've seen a feminist tackle or discuss a gender inequality issue - it has been always framed around the conceptual idea of women's rights. That concept seems to always sit at the core, while all other considerations are built around it.

I have honestly only heard a feminist frame an issue as a "Male issue" 3 or 4 times, ever. And each time it happened it was always someone complaining that feminism doesn't do enough to address issues from that point of view.

That's my experience with feminism, so take it for what it is.

I think you might have to be a fair bit more specific here. What issues? What conceptual idea of women's rights? Other way do you want things framed?

As long as feminism is a female only preserve which I as a straight male cannot enter, then why do I care? At the very least, give men a token voice in the conversation before laughing them out. That way we have more of a stake in the issue.

heyyyy

I'm curious, what is your understanding about the gender identities of those who are espousing feminist viewpoints in this very thread?

 

[caketastydelish]

Here's the thing though. That impulse that it must be rare, that difficulty believing that this entitlement exists, the invalidation or dismissal of reported experience? It's really common. And that's really part of the problem. It's actually male privilege in action.

Nonsense. More than anything, the same men who believe they *aren't* entitled to women are the ones less likely to think such entitlement is a common belief to begin with (me being a prime example, I've literally never cat-called a woman in my life).

I've watched men, in conversations about incidents of harrassment, jump straight to looking for excuses or ways to trivialise or dismiss it like "they were just being friendly" or "what were you wearing?" even with women close to them.

Yeah, in some cases it could be friendly? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75aX9mlipiY

I get that it's an unpleasant thought that the whole spectrum of entitled harassing creepy behaviours are as common as they are. But regardless, if you're not getting that this stuff is really common you're really not listening or paying attention.

Not paying attention to what never happens while I'm around? Actually, I take that back, with one exception. My coworker is a all-around good guy with the singular flaw that he keeps on pointing out when a female customer has a "nice ass". But other than that one guy, I haven't had any of my other guy friends behave in that way. Or if they are, they aren't doing it with me so I'm oblivious.

And of course, that impulse to disbelief and minimalisation is part of the cover that lets this behaviour go.

What the hell do you want my to do? Believe something that I'm not seeing? And if I did see it I would not promote such behavior. In fact I'll go as far to say I would try to discourage it. With my coworker I simply ignore him when he tries to get my attention in that way, because trying to get in a fight with him isn't worth it since I work with him which would hurt me in the long run. But if some random dude did that with me, yeah I'd tell him to piss off.

 

[Arwon]

Nonsense. More than anything, the same men who believe they *aren't* entitled to women are the ones less likely to think such entitlement is a common belief to begin with (me being a prime example, I've literally never cat-called a woman in my life).


Yeah, in some cases it could be friendly? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75aX9mlipiY


Not paying attention to what never happens while I'm around? Actually, I take that back, with one exception. My coworker is a all-around good guy with the singular flaw that he keeps on pointing out when a female customer has a "nice ass". But other than that one guy, I haven't had any of my other guy friends behave in that way. Or if they are, they aren't doing it with me so I'm oblivious.


What the hell do you want my to do? Believe something that I'm not seeing? And if I did see it I would not promote such behavior. In fact all go as far to say I would try to discourage it. With my coworker I simply ignore him when he tries to get my attention in that way, because trying to get in a fight with him isn't worth it since I work with him which would hurt me in the long run. But if some random dude did that with me, yeah I'd tell him to piss off.

Here you are in this very post, minimising, justifying and dismissing. Linking a video which attacks the very idea that women experience lots of street harassment, thinking only your direct experience counts (and not other peoples' reported experience), thinking women are misinterpreting sexual bahaviours.

I'm sorry, but that's what's happening here - you've gotta break out of your own personal experience and take on board what other people tell you about theirs. I even gave you some statistics as to prevalence, to back up the readily available anecdotes you can find anywhere about how common and subtle and potentially scary it is. For some sources on anecdotes try the Every Day Sexism Project, Hollaback, articles like this about the "Stop telling women to smile" poster campaign, countless others. I can nearly guarantee you such things will resonate with most women in your life.

 

[caketastydelish]

Here you are in this very post, minimising, justifying and dismissing.

Oh boy, this will be good.

Linking a video which attacks the very idea that women experience lots of street harassment,

It's a video of a guy getting "harassed". You came up with the other part.

thinking only your direct experience counts

I take my own word over other people's because yeah, that's how human beings operate.

(and not other peoples' reported experience),

Yeah, I should do that more often.

thinking women are misinterpreting sexual bahaviours.

What?

I'm sorry, but that's what's happening here.

Try debating the issue instead of ad-homen.

 

[jackelgull]

Do you not have a mother or wife or daughter or sister?

I have a mother, but we don't talk per se. She commands and I obey. The extent of my obedience depends on how far my mother's willing to punish me, and how much of a guilt trip she piles on.

 

[Arwon]

Oh boy, this will be good.


It's a video of a guy getting "harassed". You came up with the other part.

I take my own word over other people's because yeah, that's how human beings operate.



Yeah, I should do that more often.


What?



Try debating the issue instead of ad-homen.

Okay and we're at the point where you respond to "you should listen to personal experiences about street harrassment" by comparing it to someone claiming to be abducted by aliens, so I reckon you can just stop responding to my posts altogether I think. I gave you statistics, I gave some links in the previous post where women document their personal experiences, we're otherwise done here.

 

[warpus]

I think you might have to be a fair bit more specific here. What issues? What conceptual idea of women's rights? Other way do you want things framed?

I think I was being very specific: No issues. 0.

 

[BenitoChavez]

I'm fine with feminism being all about women's issues. But some people seem to say that it's a movement designed to promote equality between the genders, aspiring to address gender issues no matter what the gender is.

The thing is that the term Feminism has become a blanket term to describe several different groups including but possibly not limited to 1) people who support both women's and men's rights 2) people who support women's rights but largely ignore or don't discuss men's rights 3) people who support women's rights and discourage supporting men's rights.

A lot of the discussion on feminism, especially in this thread, is basically people only talking about a subset of feminism while another person is referring to another subset of feminism, but everyone calls them feminists so everyone gets upset and confused that other people perceive feminism differently.

 

[Arwon]

I think I was being very specific: No issues. 0.

And what issues would you like to see feminism address "outside of a frame of womens rights"?

(We'll ignore for the moment that rights-based liberal feminism isn't really all feminism and a huge part of feminist discourse isn't really about legal rights)

 

[BvBPL]

Links, or you're not going to even begin to convince me.

Let's say you're in a lift, and a man makes an unwelcome proposition towards you. You write about how uncomfortable you were with the experience.

Richard Dawkins reads your work and tells you, via a snide letter, that your woes don't amount to a hill of beans versus those of a woman in a Muslim nations whose genitals have been hacked off. Then he calls you a whiner.

He's a jerk.

 

[caketastydelish]

Let's say you're in a lift, and a man makes an unwelcome proposition towards you. You write about how uncomfortable you were with the experience.

Richard Dawkins reads your work and tells you, via a snide letter, that your woes don't amount to a hill of beans versus those of a woman in a Muslim nations whose genitals have been hacked off. Then he calls you a whiner.

He's a jerk.

My eyes are a tired for reading long articles, but that story is familiar to me. Isn't that the thing where one dude simply asked a woman to have coffee in his room and then she called it 'harassment'? Asking a woman out (once) isn't harassment. If I'm not wrong (please correct me if I am) didn't that guy not even say anything sexual that actually would be harassment such as "nice boobs" or whatever? Isn't this the thing where literally all he did was ask her out? How's that harassment? If I'm right about this, Dawkins was right to call her out for whining.

Okay and we're at the point where you respond to "you should listen to personal experiences about street harrassment" by comparing it to someone claiming to be abducted by aliens, so I reckon you can just stop responding to my posts altogether I think. I gave you statistics, I gave some links in the previous post where women document their personal experiences, we're otherwise done here.

Correction: You gave links to specific women talking about their specific accounts. You didn't give across-the-board statistics.

 

[warpus]

And what issues would you like to see feminism address "outside of a frame of womens rights"?

I don't know how to make it any clearer - I wouldn't like it to do this or that.

I'm just saying that some people are saying that feminism focuses on gender equality. From my experience, it focuses on women's issues instead. And that's fine.

 

[BvBPL]

My eyes are a tired for reading long articles, but that story is familiar to me. Isn't that the thing where one dude simply asked a woman to have coffee in his room and then she called it 'harassment'? Asking a woman out (once) isn't harassment.

So what?

 

[caketastydelish]

So what?

So she's a whiner if all that happened is a guy asked her out. If a woman asked me out and I whined on the internet that I was "harassed" everybody would either ignore me (because they think I'm trolling) or outright ridicule me for complaining. There are too many women legitimately suffering (even in western countries) than for me to worry about this one woman who got asked out.

 

[Arwon]

Oh look it's Arwon from the dim dark past of 19 posts ago, here from the forgotten mists of time with street harrassment and sexual advance statistics from a government source no less

As for prevalence of harrasment and unwanted advances? Here's the Austrlaian government's Institute of Family Studies:

Being subjected to sexually harassing behaviours is a particularly common experience for women (Pina & Gannon, 2012). Given the pervasive and often highly public nature of these behaviours, it is perhaps not surprising that high numbers of women have been subjected to sexual harassment and street harassment. Indeed, Tuerkheimer (1997) went as far as to say that for many women "street harassment seems an inevitable part of our existence" (p. 180; see also Laniya, 2005). For example, in Macmillan and colleagues' (2000) study "more than 80 per cent [of participants] experienced some form of stranger harassment, and almost 30 per cent experienced explicitly confrontational forms of harassment" (p. 319). This study drew on data from the Canadian-based 1993 Violence Against Women Survey, and used a representative sample of 12,300 women aged 18 years or older. Similarly, Lenton et al.'s (1999) study of 1,990 Canadian women found:

nine in ten women have experienced at least one incident of public harassment, and three in ten have been involved in the most severe type of harassment, where the perpetrator touched or tried to touch the victim in a sexual way. (p. 537)

[...]

Around 41% of the 228 female college students in Fairchild and Rudman's (2008) study indicated that they experienced "unwanted sexual attention from strangers at least once a month, including sexist remarks or seductive come ons" (p. 353). In addition to this, approximately one-third of these participants reported experiencing harassment such as "catcalls, whistles, and stares every few days or more" (p. 353). Finally, one-quarter of Fairchild and Rudman's sample encountered experiences "akin to sexual coercion or assault at least once a month" (p. 353). Based on these data, the authors argued that sexual harassment by strangers functions as "a significant form of humiliation and indignity that targets women and is likely to undermine the quality of their lives" (p. 353).

According to the AHRC national sexual harassment survey, one-third of women surveyed have experienced sexual harassment since the age of 15. Further, one-quarter of women had experienced sexual harassment in the workplace in the past 5 years (AHRC, 2012).

Finally, as with other forms of sexual violence, these statistics are likely to underestimate the true extent of women's experiences of sexual harassment. Victims of sexual harassment may not recognise or label their experience as constituting harassment (Pina & Gannon, 2012).

Wow that's good work Arwon, I dunno why that was ignored.

 

[caketastydelish]

Ah, that's what I was actually looking for. So I stand corrected.

 

[BvBPL]

So she's a whiner if all that happened is a guy asked her out. If a woman asked me out and I whined on the internet that I was "harassed" everybody would either ignore me (because they think I'm trolling) or outright ridicule me for complaining. There are too many women legitimately suffering (even in western countries) than for me to worry about this one woman who got asked out.

Accepting, argumentum, that she was, in fact, a whiner, that in no way makes it acceptable to compare her (perhaps unreasonable) discomfort with gentile mutilation via a snide letter.

Stop blaming the whiner for Dawkins's jerkery.