Carbon Fiber Masculinity WTH is this?

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That is good to hear. I suggest you read about that remarkable woman.

http://whiteribbon.org
http://www.erinpizzey.com/

Well it partly answers my question, for which you have my gratitude.

You state that it's not about solidarity with your in-group, but you define your in-group as "(other branch of) feminists". Perhaps that's what led to the confusion regarding my question. Your in-group is not defined by the traits (esp. arbitrary ones such as sex) which you share with others, it's defined as a group to which you identify as a member - in your case, that would be (mostly online) intersectional feminists.

The point is that, as with most exclusive groups, it would be highly unusual if you didn't perceive intersectional feminists as a benevolent society whose ideology and behaviours are largely positive. Being part of an in-group also tends to blind one to the plight of those who fall into the out-group.

Which leads me back to the question I asked. What you put forward as an argument advocating for your ideology came across as nothing but in-group bias to me, hence my interest in how you would perceive the same justification being used by a member of (e.g.) the WBC to describe their own organisation.

Maybe I'm just stupid, but I'm really struggling to follow you. I'm sorry but I really don't know how to answer you. I just know that social justice is something that I've always cared about, and intersectional feminism as it has been explained to me and as I have witnessed the behaviour of people who identify as such to exemplify, seemed to me to both reflect my own personal philosophy about social justice and also to provide a window into the experiences of others (because the intersectional feminists that I've met and read about and read the words of have come from various different places in the world and widely different backgrounds) that care about some of the same issues that I do. That's what it means to me, and that's why I associate myself with intersectional feminism--and why I think other people (all kinds of people) might find some value in it.

Okay, let me try to simplify it a little. When you say-



-you are describing your favoured in-group. You have a bias towards this in-group, and you find it hard to see any flaws your in-group might have. We all do this. It's called in-group bias. It goes something along the lines of "Well, they're nice to me so they must be alright".

Does that help?

But what I was saying is that they weren't just nice to me--they were nice and fair to everyone there (women from all walks of life and all over the world--there are a lot of immigrants where and sadly many of them have trouble with domestic violence and abuse because of their vulnerability, whether it's because their english is not good or they are struggling to get established financially or their family support systems are back home in another country)--including male victims and family members, and that was what inspired me to call myself an intersectional feminist. I'm not sure what that has to do with bias. I think you guys that are against feminism are against some kind of academic feminism that hasn't been my experience because I am not very college educated and don't hang around with academics. Maybe if I worked on a university campus I would see the kind of feminism you guys are talking about, but I don't see it where I live and amongst the people I have associated with in support groups and at my local women's shelter (which is where I met most of the feminists that I know in person rather than ones I read about online).

My first thought on reading the abstract in the OP was 'Sokal's hoax.'

My second thought was, 'This is why I am contemptuous of philosophy.' It has feminist overtones, but really it's an example of the sort of intellectual masturbation with virtually no real-world impact that I just despise.

Wilberforce, that's what I got from your description. I think that someone might be looking for in-group bias where it doesn't actually exist, based on a pre-existing stereotype about the supposedly exclusionary nature of feminism (ie, straw-feminism).

Such a position requires that you believe in a 'pure' or 'true' version of feminism. When feminists can reach a consensus on what that might be, we can revisit the notion of "straw-feminism".

Of course, what we were discussing was feminists, not the multiple versions of the ideology they seem to ascribe to. If you're not the kind of feminist being discussed, then brilliant. It does, however, make me wonder why you're willing to associate with these adherents of false feminism by invoking the umbrella of 'feminism' as if it were a universal ideology among feminists.

I that is how generally I would have viewed it a year ago, however I have been following event in various universities including this one that lead me to believe the motivation is not purely academic and there is some real world impact in terms of influence.

I appreciate your point about straw-feminism. However there is a specific brand of feminism, with certain ideas which have been popular of late in universities in the US and UK.

So I don't treat it as purely benign, because the movement in question has a track record or weaponizing certain concept and phrases such as "safe space" and "trigger warning", in order to shut down debate and favour one group over another, with no clinical rationale behind it.

There are feminist who are critical of this whole approach, e.g. Choice/unicorn/equality feminists who differentiate from identity focused feminist. Not sure about anarchist/libertarian feminist. In principle they should also be against the type of divisive feminism that I'm talking about.

Intesectional feminism is a nice idea in theory except it has at times watered down the other causes attempting to put feminism at the centre, when other focuses of discrimination are no less important or the feminist angle can be the least significant factor (ethic minority job prospects being a good example). At worst it has encouraged concepts that run counter the the civil right movements historical objectives such as ideas tantamount to returning to segregation.

I appropriate wilburforce saying that she and her friends don't see discrimination an privilege as mutually exclusive however there is a natrual tendency in people to wan to group all problem under one easy boogie man.

These group still tend to use phrase like "white male privilege", "patriarchy", which I think are lazy catch-alls. Also sometime they are overly focused on labeling themselves and others. At talks the way some of these groups introduce themselves is a whole string of labels from gender to sexuality to race to social status it takes about a minute to get through. So I do think they still have a tendency to need to pigeon hole people.

Given that straw-feminists are almost entirely mythical creatures (and/or sockpuppets invented by men in order to substantiate their own ideas about the irrationality of feminists - think, for example, of 4chan convincing themselves that they'd convinced women to urinate on themselves in the name of feminism, when the supposed examples consisted pretty much entirely of other men pretending to be the suckered women), I don't think that it presumes a homogenous feminism to say that 'feminism as exclusionary' does not apply to mainstream feminism, to most feminism, or to a statistically significant subset of feminism at the moment. The notable exception is the trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or TERFs, but they are marginalized to the degree that they are mocked in mainstream (currently intersectional) feminist circles with their own acronym.
I submit that someone who actually runs in feminist circles might know more about the current state of feminism than someone who only reads about feminism second and third hand on websites primarily run and occupied by non-feminist men.
In particular, I don't think that I was wrong that Wilberforce was being misinterpreted in this case.

I have been out of academia for a while, so I'll have to take your word for it. I generally agree that shutting down dialog, especially in a university setting, is almost always more harmful than good.


Not exactly a cure for this, but lately the intersectional feminists have been morphing into 'SJWs' which started out as a disparaging term but which has been repatriated as a mark of pride, but some of them have become SO self-righteous that they are winnowing out many of those who would support them in theory for a lack of purity. It's reminiscent of the purges in Maoist China.


I don't disagree. I'm not a SJW. ''strident feminist" though I may be (as named by another poster here on WP a long time ago), I am not pure enough to be an SJW.

I'm wondering around now if I'm alone in finding this article a somewhat interesting observation .... And that's it.

I feel quite relaxed about it- but that may be me not seeing any hidden agenda and just taking the text at face value.

I did too. I thought there was a there there. Though I'd have liked to see more pictures and fewer words. It's the sort of subject that would really benefit from illustrations of the matter under discussion, and I find the endless references interrupt the flow of any point-making that goes on. Though I understand that's the format, and it probably helps in gaining publish-or-perish points.

Excellent. Should you use the term "straw-feminist" in future, I'll understand that you mean "fictional being" or "dubious 'victim' of 4chan". Which of these two categories does Hickey-Moody fall into?



It presumes that there is a default "correct" version of feminism which you're defining by using the somewhat broad term "intersectional feminism". There's something of a difference between "straw-feminist" and "heretic". You say "mythical creature", I call "no true feminist".

I may have been too hasty to accept your definition of a straw-feminist. It's beginning to seem that what you mean is "feminist whose views I disagree with". If that is indeed the case, then come right out and say as much. In fact, why not get together and elect yourselves a feminist pope? That way you could excommunicate practitioners of heresy instead of defending them or pretending they don't exist.

Of course, you're also going to have to provide a definition of feminism beyond "well dictionary, duh".



But what does the feminist pope have to say on the subject?



I submit that a student of religion might understand the Holy Bible better than someone who sits in the pews.



In which case it would be entirely reasonable for me to assume that the "someone who only reads..." refers to myself. Regretfully, I don't match the profile of your straw-reader. Kindly cease barking or find another tree.

I don't know who or what Hickey-Moody is; given that I've been hanging around with mainstream feminists for 20 years or so, and still am not familiar with the term, I'm going to guess that it's not terribly important to feminism.


No. Presuming a dominant paradigm does not presume correctness, in science or in feminism.


No, I agree that exclusionists are 'real' feminists - I just don't agree that they represent the movement, or speak for the movement; I don't agree that citing them as bad examples effectively tars feminism as a whole.

See above. That is not an accurate representation of my points; it is, in fact, inaccurate enough to be suspiciously like an excuse for dismissing my point without addressing it.


No, I'm not. Again, I'm not saying that radfems are 'not real feminists,' I'm saying that they don't represent the movement as a whole, and the exclusionary radfems that were implied earlier are so rare in the movement that they are a statistical non-entity. Numerically there may be dozens or even hundreds, but they make up a vanishingly small proportion of American feminists, at least.

Flat-earthers actually exist, and they are actual creationists, but even I (with my degree focused, in part, on evolutionary biology) will admit that pretending that flat-earthers represent creationism as a whole is misrepresenting the whole movement of creationism. I still think creationism is stupid, in the same way that you probably think that all feminists are still full of s**t, but I at least try to argue with opponents that actually exist in a statistical sense.


You imply that the two are mutually exclusive; they are not.


*snort*
I just love it when people on internet forums that exist for people to argue on tells me to shut up and go away. I take it as I sign that I touched one of the nerves I was aiming for. See above with 'inaccurate representations of my views for convenient dismissal.'

So you've piled into the thread without understanding the context of any discussion within it.



Ideologies don't presume correctness? Interesting claim. Invoking science here is a clear red herring, so we'll ignore it.



Except you claimed that they were made of straw. You can't have it both ways.



From someone who jumped right into the thread without first taking the necessary time to understand the context of the discussion.



Then you're discussing a nebulous ideology which is represented by anyone who chooses to wear the hat.



You appear to have completely missed the point. At no point have you offered any argument against claims that were being made or positions that were being upheld. Rather, you've tried to dismiss criticism against feminists (singular and plural) as targeting "straw-feminism". I'm not interested in your inter-denominational politics, nor am I interested in unqualified blanket assertions using undefined terms.



However, what you've done in this thread is the equivalent of a "mainstream creationist" who weighs in on an argument levelled against "creationists" and makes the assumption that what is being discussed is "all creationists", conflates "creationists" with "creationism" and argues that the "creationists" being discussed are all "flat-earthers and/or straw-creationists".



So you have a preconceived construct of my position, sans evidence, and you prefer to argue against "statistical" representations of an undefined nature, rather than individual perspectives. I prefer to argue with opponents who exist in the physical sense over wasting time on strawmen.



That was clearly an allegory. Your inference, not my implication. If you need the metaphor explained, you need only ask.



To "bark up the wrong tree" is to pursue a misguided line of thought or course of action. You were being advised to reconsider your flawed approach, not to "shut up and go away".



How deliciously ironic.