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[Jace]

That is usually the red flag that allows you to completely ignore what someone is saying, regardless of their point. Radical conversions never lead to discussions worth having.

What a nice sentiment. If you don't like the tone of the messenger, just ignore the message out of hand.

For the record however, the impression offered by that line is not what I intended. If it was, I'd still leave it up. Consider that.

It has nothing to do with the message itself, it is just an easy predictor that trying to have a discussion with the person won't bear any fruit. That being said, this is largely true regarding these topics on the internet anyway - hence why I, for the most part, left my contribution to answering the questionnaire in the other thread and only a couple of other posts. It is easy to tell when a discussion will be utterly pointless.

But for those who would like to know why some people bow out of these kinds of discussions, it can be helpful to mention why. Hence me mentioning your sentence that you later removed.

[Graelyn]

I often judge the merits of a belief based on the type of person/mindset that it appeals to.

Zealotry reeks, no matter the flavor.

[Jace]

I often judge the merits of a belief based on the type of person/mindset that it appeals to.

Zealotry reeks, no matter the flavor.

Except for unicorn zealots.

[orange]

I'm not going to touch most of this, because it's subjective and I don't think it's worth trying to argue with you about. But there are a couple of objective issues here that happen to matter a great deal to me.

Disclaimer: This is written from the perspective of a WASP male in the United States (otherwise known as life on easy mode).

To start with, you will have to explain to me what a WASP male is, the term is new to me. Also, how is this life on "easy mode"? The idea confuses me, sorry

The acronym means White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.  In the modern US it tends to be used as a catch-all term for anyone of European descent (excluding first generation immigrants).  It is really no longer confined to Anglo-Saxon and Protestant faith.

It is considered easy-mode because Anglo-Saxon Protestant men built the system in which everyone else lives.  Historically, all the rights and privileges are afforded to WASP men.  In the case of other Protestant northern Europeans, integration into that society was straightforward.  Catholics (first Irish then Italians) took at little more time, but were largely integrated by the mid-20th Century.

[Victoria Stecker]

Bear in mind that some of my response is colored by my experiences with anti-feminists here and the fact that you're quoting similar sources and using similar arguments, though you may be coming to slightly different conclusions.

The arguments here follow a patern like this:
1) Feminist points out how bad things are for women.
2) Anti-feminist points out that things aren't great for men.
3) Anti-feminist uses the feminist's failure to point this out say feminist is biased against men and clearly not actually looking for equality after all.
4) Anti-feminist then uses this to excuse doing nothing about how bad things are for women.

Your post (in my reading) hit (2) and (3) and I assumed (4). From the sounds of your post since, you seem to still be hitting (2) and (3) but not (4), which is better, but I think (3) is still garbage.

Feminist naturally implies that they are focused on addressing the ways in which society hurts women - this doesn't mean that they don't care about the ways society hurts men, too. It simply means that isn't their focus. Some of them may lack sympathy for the ways men like me suffer (more on that later), but that doesn't mean they're denying that it happens.

Even if this is true, (it conflicts a bit with other sources I've seen, though those again conflict with others. Sorry, trying to keep and open mind here) my point and issue is that feminists may care for the 300K women, but don't seem even able to acknowledge that the 15K yearly male victims even exist. Why is this, and why can't both be dealt with? Claiming to stand for equality and only dealing with, let alone only acknowledging the female victims is dishonest, in my view.

Well, there are a couple reasons for this. The biggest is that when you talk about ending rape, you don't do it by talking about the victims. You do it by talking about the rapists. And the rapists? They're all men¹. Rape is a problem because men commit rape, and it will continue to be a problem until men stop committing rape. This applies whether the victims are male or female.

So I guess it depends on how you read it when feminist talk about all the female victims of rape and don't mention the 4-5% of victims that are male. In general, when the victim statistics are brought up, the purpose is to highlight that this is a BIG ISSUE and needs to be addressed. For that purpose, the statistics for women are much more horrifying and much more effective.


¹Not quite, they're 99% male.

False rape accusations happen. When they do, the vast majority of reported cases don't hold any penalty at all for the accuser, who is almost always a woman accusing a man. For the man though, the accusation itself is often very damaging, it can easily create life-long social stigma. He's been accused, so many will believe there is something to it, even if he was proven innocent.

I suspect this is cultural (iirc you're from northern europe?) because it's a very different situation here in the US¹. Women who come forward as victims can expect to be called liars and sluts and treated like utter garbage, especially if their accusation doesn't lead to an arrest or conviction. This also helps keep the number of false accusations down - why would a woman put herself through the shitstorm that comes with a rape accusation if it wasn't true? Many of them aren't willing to deal with it even if it is.



¹The exception to this is child molestation. If an adult (male or female) is accused of raping a child, their life is instantly destroyed, even if it turns out not to be true. We really fucking hate child molesters. Ordinary rapists, on the other hand, we're not quite as bothered by.

My issue with all this is the usual. There are issues affecting both genders, but the undisputed biggest movement for "equality" that has the best PR department and the best pull on governments - Feminism - don't seem to give a shit about half of the issues - namely those that effect men. Your own points here in your reply seem to me to hold much the same viewpoints.

That last line actually made me laugh - which is tough when talking about this subject. It seems like we are reading in each other's words things we're used to seeing that aren't necessarily there (see what I wrote above). I do care about issues that effect men - they impact me quite directly. That feminists aren't worried about them isn't all that shocking - they are focused on issues that effect women.

To make another doctor analogy, saying an oncologist doesn't care about heart disease because he chose to focus his efforts elsewhere doesn't make much sense. No one can do everything - people choose to focus on certain things. Feminists have chosen to focus on women's issues.

Why shouldn't feminists worry about issues that impact men? Because in general, men created these systems. If men are suffering, they are suffering under burdens they created for themselves. If women are suffering, they are suffering under burdens men created for them. This may lead to reduced sympathy for the men.

I don't care about them being on the same level or not. I modified that quote made by a feminist to highlight issues that face women, to create a near identical one that face men. The point was that pre-set social expectations affects men to, ergo it's a problem for both genders. I don't care who has it worse, I care that we agree with both issues and deal with both. Because overwhelmingly caring for the issue facing women and ignoring the men, or the other way around, is meaningless if your trying to gain equality. Feminism don't seem to do that, least not to me. but I do. Thus the whole point of this tread on Backstage about raising the issue and starting off this debate on equality.

Thank you for participating, by the way.

Here we're going to have to disagree. I don't think we have to focus on one issue to the exclusion of the other. But if equality is the goal, then you get there by taking the situation which is worse and focusing on improving it. If things are worse for women than they are for men, then you work on improving things for women.

Now, I'm not suggesting that we should ignore men's issues. I think we should address them as well, especially since many of the issues which effect men end up having a negative impact on women as well. What I'm saying is that you can ignore men's issues in favor of women's while still making a credible claim to the goal of equality.

If you're after utopia, you have to fix both. If you're after equality, you just have to fix the women's situation until it only sucks as much as the men's, and no worse.


Emergency room analogy stuff:
[spoiler]

Imagine two people in the emergency room. One of them has a migraine and is in tremendous pain. The other has a gunshot wound. The doctors are focusing on the one with the gunshot wound, because that's the worse injury.

In my opinion, the anti-feminist movements are like the guy with the migraine claiming that the guy with the gunshot is exaggerating. That the guy with the gunshot is somehow denying the existance of the other guy's pain. That the fact that they are both in pain means that there condition is equal and that the gunshot doesn't deserve special attention.

Nice analogy. Problem with the analogy is that who is the gun-shot victim and who is the migraine sufferer depends on what particular issue we speak of. In some case it's the woman who has been shot and an insensitive man bitches that he's not treated in her stead, in some cases the roles are reversed. Either way, they both have issues and both suffer from problems that should and can be dealt with. Why does it have to be one over the other? In the case of your example, why can't the one with the gun-shot wound be taken to the operating table while the migraine victim get's the needed treatment at the same time?

But the truth is, neither of these injuries negates the other. The fact that one guy has a gunshot wound and is dying doesn't minimize the pain experienced by the guy with the migraine. But neither does the pain of the man with the migraine make gunshot wound less serious. They're both bad, but one is much worse.

Society sends both genders a lot of fucked up messages about who and how we should be, but anyone trying to make it seem like the fucked up messages society sends me as a man are as bad as the fucked up messages society sends my wife as a woman is full of shit.

You are completely right, one issue is worse than the other. And yet, both are still issues. Can we please agree to deal with both and stop acting like it's all or nothing, only one of them get's treated ever? Because in that case the gun-shot always get's treatment no matter what, on the grounds that it's more serious an issue, but this still won't help the person with the migraine at all.

As for your opinion on who has it worse off between you and your wife, I won't be able to comment on your two specifically, I don't know either of you But I would think a more fair and just society don't just tell your wife how her issue can be resolved and fixed, it would tell you how you can fix yours too. At least I'd hope so...

[/spoiler]

You and I are saying the same thing. I'm not saying that the guy with the migraine doesn't get treated, I said repeatedly that the presence of a worse injury doesn't invalidate his lesser one at all.

They are, however, treated by different doctors. I don't have a problem with feminists focusing on the bigger injury.

I have a problem with people saying that feminist arguments are somehow invalid or that feminists aren't truly interested in equality because they are focusing primarily on women's issues. They aren't generally denying that men's issues exist (though they do get offended if you try to say they are just as bad, because they aren't), that simply isn't what they are focusing their efforts on correcting.

If someone wishes to focus on the way society makes life suck for men, there's no problem with that, and I would fully support it. A movement that worked in parallel to feminism to correct the ways our culture hurts men would be awesome. Demanding that feminists be the ones to do this is silly.

[Kala]

Going to make a nebulous rambling point because it occurred to me and I want to.  I think it's still relevant to the themes of the thread, but feel free to pluck it if it's not.

One of my vested interests in this thread is because I identify (cautiously, I know it's a contentious term) as a feminist. (Not solely, I identify as a lot of things - a gamer being one, I won't go into the others) So there is a kind of...knee-jerk to when people say "this is what the feminists say" "this is what the feminists think" because I'm there thinking...hey! no I don't! 

The reason I identify with feminism is due to the egalitarian aspect of equality.  It's an ideal that is important to me.  There is an argument that feminism is purely devoted to furthering women's interests, but I see it more as identifying (and one day perhaps dismantling) power structures and hierarchy.  This intersects with not just issues of gender, but also race, class and sexuality - it's the same mechanism.  It's how power functions, how dominant ideology becomes normalized which is why it's invisible - not because it doesn't exist, but because it's difficult to challenge norms that are ingrained.  I.e to see things from the outside when you're inside.

Feminism calls dominant ideology patriarchy (focusing on gender).  Marxism would call it cultural hegemony (focusing on class).  To me, it really doesn't matter what you call it, what matters is being able to identify power, authority and influence.  So I also see feminism as a way of challenging a certain kind of assumed authority.

A more personal reason (that I stated elsewhere) is the presupposition of some feminist thinking that gender is bollocks.  Well, that's not entirely fair - that gender exists, but it only exists because it's socially conditioned, therefore it's not fixed and you do not have to submit to someone else's definition of you.  I.e 'gender' is 'masculine' and 'feminine' - masculine is a catch-all term for various personality traits that we gender, such as active, strong, outgoing, achieving, and feminine the same but inverted.  People are infinitely more complex than catch-all terms and are, in all likelihood, going to be comprised of differing degrees of things considered 'masculine' and 'feminine'. 

As such, we are all the kwisatz haderach 

'Masculine' and 'feminine' has very little to do, in any real sense, with 'man' 'woman' or 'male' 'female' - it's just we've been conditioned to think in these terms and so we do. And so we are.  But that makes it restrictive when a man wants to show his feelings, or a woman wants to achieve. (It also gives me a vocabulary and methodology to examine things I instinctively knew as a kid but had no frame of reference)

So that's feminism, in a nutshell, for me.  I know there's (many) different types and schools, and while I obviously recognize that men and women are different, I subscribe less to the feminism of celebrating our difference and unique experience of womanhood (French feminism?).  I'd rather celebrate our differences and unique experiences of being people.

That said...

/rant on

Feminism on the internet, or tumblr feminism, as a kind of group-think, will destroy itself.
 
From that I don't mean all feminists who happen to be on the internet (like me!) or on tumblr, but there does seem to be a specific group who identify online as feminists and are willing to rip eachother to shreds at the drop of a hat. 

They seem to be wielding inclusivity as a weapon which is...not what inclusivity is supposed to be.  If you aren't inclusive enough, if you don't use the right words, denounce the right people, you're a bad feminist, you betray the sisterhood and you cannot enter the club-house.

There is a policing, and it's extreme. People are tripping over themselves to call out privilege wherever they see it, and define themselves by opposition.  There's a patting themselves on the back for pointing out "bad behaviour" and moral outrages in others that is sanctimonious. 

In one corner of the internet, feminists are tearing apart self-proclaimed feminist Caitlin Moran, because she got the cast of Sherlock to read out slash fanfiction for the lolz.  How horrible! How demeaning to the fan-fiction writer, and because it's slash and Moran finds it funny, she's obviously being derogatory and homophobic by making light of an oppressed minority.  That's not my feminism.  It's also upsetting Benedict Cumberbatch and I love Ben, and Moran is a bad feminist.

Some time later, in another corner of the internet, feminists are tearing apart Sherlock star Benedict Cumberbatch for being a rich white privileged male whose privilege is compounded by the fact his ancestors got rich on the backs of slaves (sugar, I think). So...I don't think I can love Ben anymore - he's classist and given his privilege comes from race hate, in a round about way he has the taint of racism too.  He should apologise.  For stuff his ancestors did before he was born.

(A lot of this, it has to be said, comes from Jezebel which proports itself as a kind of feminist gossip mag.  And what's the main component of a gossip mag?  To bitch.  Particularly about other women.  It also has an area called 'group-think' which I think is only too appropriate and pertinent, as it's another kind of echo-chamber which are always harmful).

I don't feel this kind of policing is progressive; if anything it's stifling.

I can understand how people with no interest or fore-knowledge of feminist theory, would see people being so...collectively petty while calling themselves feminists, and thinking - nope. Feminism is not for me. It's possible to both identify as a feminist and be fairly...jaded by feminism in another sense.  It's so broad! But I think in the latter sense what I'm encountering is a) a vocal minority amplified by the internet and b) the internet.  It's erroneous to ascribe that thinking to Feminism as a movement or a whole.

(and the internet is where you can also find this http://www.returnofkings.com/  )


tl;dr - feminism seems a good thing to adopt.  some feminists don't seem good.  because they're people.  some people suck.

[Victoria Stecker]

(and the internet is where you can also find this http://www.returnofkings.com/  )

oh god that shit was hilarious. I'm used to idiots, but usually they aren't so articulate while being so wrong.

[Kala]

I find it a fairly troubling example of what hate and fear coupled with group-think/an echo chamber can produce, personally. 

But maybe I'm taking the interwebz too srsly, I dunno. (I have a tendency to over-analyse)

[Jace]

I find it a fairly troubling example of what hate and fear coupled with group-think/an echo chamber can produce, personally. 

But maybe I'm taking the interwebz too srsly, I dunno. (I have a tendency to over-analyse)

Teh internets is srsbsns. Anon says so.

[Victoria Stecker]

I find it a fairly troubling example of what hate and fear coupled with group-think/an echo chamber can produce, personally. 

But maybe I'm taking the interwebz too srsly, I dunno. (I have a tendency to over-analyse)

Oh no, you're absolutely right. The fact that people can seriously believe the shit they're writing on the site is horrifying.

[BloodBird]

I'm sorry, my time for tonight is up. I'll respond to your excellent post tomorrow, or as soon as I can.

Yeah so clearly this did not happen. I'd like to offer an apology to the participants of this topic, I've been busy, and on top of that had very little eagerness to engage in this topic at this time. Take from that what you want, I guess...

I'll return to this tread to respond whenever time and desire allow me, it's not like it will go away anytime soon.

[PracticalTechnicality]

I do not have much to contribute at present as I am a little rushed (hotel internet), but I thought you guys might like this article that seems at least generally relevant.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/13/transgender-facebook-expands-gender-options 

The right to self-identify and express in multimedia is coming, slowly but surely.  That's a little step towards equality of expression at the very least.

[Iwan Terpalen]

I noticed that, and found it interesting. Fascinating confluence of engineering, user interface design, social issues, and capitalism.

The people to which it applies seem to be pretty happy about it, although I noticed a little push-back centered on the idea that they're not something "Custom." Which I can understand -- although I can also see the concerns and limitations on Facebook's side.  I'm actually kind of impressed that they already dodged a bullet by not labeling it "Other."

[Louella Dougans]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4UWxlVvT1A

saw this, was interesting

[Jace]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4UWxlVvT1A

saw this, was interesting

Interesting, indeed. A few odd choices regarding his mannerisms, but worth a watch.