Over-extended Feminism

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I rarely wear makeup, and when I do, I use very little. Usually the only comments I get are, "You look really well rested today," not, "Oh wow, look at all that makeup on your face!"

I do not wear high heels. I do not wear skirts. I do not tan (I hide from the sun, and I am pasty white year-round ). I do not go for expensive hair cuts, I do not get highlights, and I do not spend hours every day straightening my hair. I don't wear any kind of perfume. I refuse to wear contacts - I wear my glasses with pride.

Because I don't do these things, I do tend to stand out amongst the other women I work with. This can be bad, at times, but because I am in a fairly nerdy profession (engineering), it hasn't really harmed my career.

That being said, there have been times when my unwillingness to conform has caused me grief.

And yes, the societal pressure to conform to preconceived gender roles can harm men as much as women. My husband is currently on parental leave looking after our 7 month old son. He is a great dad. But he has had to put up with a lot of crap from his coworkers and managers because he is staying home with his child while his wife is at work. Even though it is his LEGAL right to do so. I have received a few shocked looks, frowns (and I'm sure negative gossip behind my back) when people find out that I decided not to take a full year off for my maternity leave. (I live in Canada, btw.)

My husband and I don't care about what other people think, though, so we figure screw 'em. And I think it is just as important for him to have the opportunity to spend time with our baby as it was for me. Also - I read in this thread there were some discussions about after a baby being weaned, there's no reason why a father couldn't be the primary care giver - well, I am still breastfeeding even though I am working (I just have to pump when I'm at work, and my husband gives the baby bottles during the day), so even that isn't a reason to deny fathers a chance to be primary care givers. It does require more planning and effort on our parts, but it is well worth it I think.

But, I think that the issue others in this thread have tried to point out is this: Even though some people may wish to do certain things (women not wear make up / heels / etc., fathers stay at home with their children, mothers go back to work from mat leave before they necessarily have to because they consider their careers important), they may not feel comfortable doing so because of societal pressure. It is like peer pressure that your parents warned you about when you were in high school - but on a massive, cultural scale.

Having laws that protect someone's right to choose what they want to do doesn't mean that they will feel free to do what they want to do. And it does impact their choices. These are the unwritten 'rules' in society. Ignoring that fact doesn't make it magically disappear.

To everyone not wishing to debate the definition of feminism...

Walk out now. Why? Because we cannot debate whether feminism has over-reached unless we agree on what feminism is.

As a human, I take human institutions to be meaningful, although I reject some. I know they are subjective, and I don't care, and I certainly don't need a fictitious myside God to objectify my beliefs.

Would you say, then, that rights only exist when granted and protected by the state? What of ethical rights, and claims grounded in sources of authority other than the state, and other than the majority?

Well obviously. The point was that the things I mentioned as being rights are similar in justification as the LEGAL rights women have gained, since this thread is about feminism, and at the moment, the nature of gender rules.

Moral Relativism is a very dangerous road to go down, ethically....

His statement isn't pushing relative morality or ethics.(Which would be saying any view is right in the correct context, in this case he is saying that right is what the majority makes of it, and that objective morality is wholly irrelevant when that is taken into account, assuming a large population is incapable of being objective as a group.)

Although it is kind of dangerous, but it's really the only thing that actually works anyways, eventually if the majority is discontent something will happen to accommodate them.

...And my answer would still apply to that. Masculinity and femininity blown outta proportion by social constructions ARE caricatures of the most basic natural manifestations of masculinity and femininity.

Gay men for example do have index fingers that are longer than their ring fingers and are been born with less testosterone in the womb, but society blows this out of proportion and stereotypes em as limp wristing super girly men. Hell you wouldn't be able to tell if a man's gay or not in reality just by his mannerisms.

And what are the most basic manifestations of masculinity and femininity? Testosterone gives men better spatial ability and estrogen gives women better verbal ability. Also testosterone is proven to make us bigger risk takers
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 144124.htm
Hell, this even applies to women
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 151254.htm

Testosterone is known to make us more competitive. There's a reason cats are less aggressive and don't piss all over the place (which is done to establish territory) after they're been neutered. Yes low testosterone makes people more aggressive too since it makes us more moody but the aggression is motivated more by neuroticism than a competitive drive.

Estrogen is known to give a cognitive advantage in verbal ability whereas testosterone gives a cognitive advantage in spatial ability. Also higher estrogen is linked to better multitasking ability. These things are biological, so masculinity and femininity has a basis in nature. Once again, I maintain that males and females are different. Neither being inherently superior or inferior to each other, but each having unique advantages and disadvantages.

But yes these rules that society blow outta proportion do have negative effects and no one deserves social stigmatization for being outta the norm.

Exactly.

I agree but no one has the "right" to be considered attractive or the "right" not to be judged by their peers according to how money they make or how often they get laid. No one has the right to be denied rights or access to education or employment based on the fact that they don't conform to standard gender roles. Mutual respect and access are two different things. One's a social issue, the other is an institutional issue (though there is overlap which is why it's more effective for social change to lead to institutional change rather than institutional change forcing social change).

btw I believe in intrinsic morality. In fact I interpret some parts of evolutionary theory as evidence that morality is intrinsic to social beings. The reptilian (cerebellum) and monkey (limbic system) part of our brains are the least developed while our human brain (neo-cortex) is the most evolved. The reptilian brain deals with survival, domination, etc... while the monkey brain deals with social dynamics (it's the part of your brain that tells you what a p**** you are for not fighting). The neo-cortex on the other hand pertains to higher functions and empathy. So I think moral relativism is the result of mental laziness and just dismissing all the complexities by calling it all relative. Yes morality is partly socially constructed, but like I said about beauty and stuff pertaining to gender roles social construction either has a basis in nature or is inspired by nature.

Last edited by AceOfSpades on 05 Apr 2011, 9:22 pm, edited 3 times in total.

If that was aimed at me (not my quote), here is my reply;

I'm a moral nihilist in some senses; I don't think that there really is any solid, objective justification for morality. There are biological predispositions to be disgusted by certain acts, but as history has made abundantly clear, they are quite ephemeral and weak. To say that something is right or wrong is merely to voice societal approval or abhorrent to that act; it's impossible to prove anything is right or wrong because the concepts are quite meaningless.

Even in the case of murder, a person could say that it is disgusting, that it terminates a life, that a person suffers terribly, and that only a monster could do it. He could reply that many disgusting is not the sole critereon for right or wrong (by their definition); people may find surgery, or homosexuality disgusting, but not wrong. To the second and third he would reply "yes"? To the fourth, he could say " Emotive name calling does not compel me to believe I should cease killing". The person arguing could say he has a "right" not to be be killed, and the murderer may reply "We are in a country in which murder is legal. I can kill you if I wish, without repercussion. If I declare myself to have a right to $1,000, nature does not bend to hand it to me. Rights seem to be consensus".

I don't think any argument could bridge the "is/ought gap; to state that people cry when you hit them does not unavoidable imply that you ought not to hit them. Your reaction to an objective fact is your own.

Of course, I am not a sociopath, and I realise that reciprocal altruism make the world a safer, happier place (which is why people have a predisposition biologically towards is). I wouldn't hurt a fly, yet alone a person. But I don't believe rights and morality are an immutable, transcendent quality; all evidence implies they aren't. But as people, we need a set of permissible/impermissible actions, and we call these rights. My personal opinion on rights, is that people should follow a non-aggression principle, and after that do what they want for the most part.

Hope that comment was aimed at me, otherwise I just went very OT out of the blue

Okay, we'll just accept everything you say on faith. Have a nice day, ma'am.

So you're agreeing with me that gendered rules are harmful-
TEGH being made to feel unemployable and judged negatively because she doesn't choose to submit to putting on makeup, for instance?

They most certainly are a right to those who fight strict gender scripts in order to secure for people freedom from demands made on them by society because of their sex. Of course it's a social issue- that's what we're talking about- social change.

Moral relativism isn't the observation that moral systems are socially-constructed (that's ethical subjectivism),
but the assertion that the truth value of an ethical proposition is dependent on what culture that proposition is in-
in other words, if FGM is a-okay according to the laws and customs of the country it occurs in, it is a-ok ethically as well.

You've repeated this three times with no evidence. Most of the things we engage in as modern humans have absolutely no analogue in nature, and gender roles are no different. Plus, beauty ideals are constantly changing. I feel like a broken record, but you can hardly repeat this-or-that is "natural" when I can point to ten or 30 or 100 years ago and say "Really?" The beauty ideals of today would have been considered GROTESQUE a century ago, and vice versa.

The point, as I've mentioned before, is irrelevant. Rape and cannibalism are themes which occur regularly in nature-
are these ethically justifiable?

Well, not quite......I don't expect feminists to level society overnight, but some kind of real effort in that direction would work wonders on me. It's the first thing I'd look for in a race or gender activist.

Yes I've already said that


Ok when did I say no one has the right to fighting gender scripts? No one has the right to force others to judge em one way or the other. However everyone has the right not to be denied access to things and protected from crime.

I have no problem with imposing social change, but everyone legally has the same rights so like affirmative action or "hate crime" (which I think should be abolished altogether) cross the line.

Oh Ok.


You've repeated this three times with no evidence. Most of the things we engage in as modern humans have absolutely no analogue in nature, and gender roles are no different. Plus, beauty ideals are constantly changing. I feel like a broken record, but you can hardly repeat this-or-that is "natural" when I can point to ten or 30 or 100 years ago and say "Really?" The beauty ideals of today would have been considered GROTESQUE a century ago, and vice versa.[/quote]No evidence? I've pointed out that testosterone and estrogen do make men and women behave more masculine and feminine, so these things aren't just cuz society told em so. But anyways where does social construction come from if it either doesn't have a basis in nature or isn't inspired by it? I'd like to actually know, this isn't some test I'm throwing at you.

I've already said it's not right to violate someone else's rights or access to things cuz they don't fit the norm of beauty.

memes evolve and spread based on how well they integrate with human neurology and with the extant memes that already inhabit a prospective host, and sometimes they do so in ways that are detrimental to their hosts physiology or biological fitness (religious memes that drive self-mortification, celibacy, or suicide, for example). Likewise, the sociological meme complexes for what is 'feminine' or 'masculine' might be somewhat based on physiology, but humans are sociologically so complex that it is extremely difficult to extract the biological parts from the cultural parts. Factors that vary dramatically from culture to culture - diet, for example - are less likely to have a basis in biological need. One can say that there is a biological need for some amount of protein, but not that there is a biolgical need for hamburgers. Likewise, one can say that there is probably a hard-wired tendency for both women and men (because in the vast majority of cultures, it is both) to self-ornament, whether it is with feathers or facepaint or precious metals.

The majority of the feminism that I see (if not the loudest) is about preserving and enhancing the laws that regulate women's rights and equality (ie, preserving RvW and trying to bring back the ERA), and changing the mores that say that women should be more chaste than men, that women should self-decorate more than men, that men can't care for kids and women can't be CEOs, and that both men and women who step outside of their sociolgical gender rules should be socially punished for their transgressions.

I see some of the better aspects of feminism as a branch of accepting neurodiversity. A poster on another thread had contended that understanding differences often observed between the two genders does not make disparaging someone's potential necessary. Males and females are not identical, yet which two people are? It is not impossible for two mirror opposites to have some overlapping talents. People on the autism spectrum supposedly have a strictly male brain. A female with an a.s.d., would be considered by a complementarian to have masculine characteristics and therefore to be homosexual or transgendered, even if she is strait (not to mention that many n.t. women are lacking in femininity).

I am not sure how this topic fits into the PPR forum. My philosophy is more compatible with feminism/humanism than complementarianism, yet making others follow one's personal lifestyle only leads to disaster (unless intervening is required to prevent abuse). Political correctness is impractical because of the way reverse psychology works.

Last edited by petitesouris on 10 Apr 2011, 10:16 am, edited 3 times in total.

"There are more differences among the sexes than between them."

That is something I can certainly agree to.