Over-extended Feminism

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Hi everybody,

I was wondering what your thoughts are on current feminism in the West, that it might be more destructive then constructive at the moment?

All and all feminism is about empowering women, but is it missing it's mark here?

I'm interested in your thoughts on the subject.

Cheerfully,
Wallourdes

I don't think so. I dislike the whole pathetic "poor me" culture, where people demand compensation for Irish jokes and innocuous references to skin colour, but the whole "big bad feminism" movement is over feared. I think that ultra-feminists (sexists with a different set of genitals) should be loathed, along with other hate groups.

I think sexual equality is still a little off, but it's much better than what it was. For that, I commend the feminists.

My only qualm with feminism is, that for such a formerly vocal group, they seem to be doing absolutely nothing in regards to Islamic female rights. The women are forced to wear tents by their violent and psychopathic "lovers", they are constantly degraded in that 500 page block of poor horses**t that is the Q'uran, they are stoned and flogged. But where are the feminists? Are they so immersed in cultural relativism (of course, that doesn't apply to their mistreatment of them in their own country ) that they refuse to speak?

There's a lot of debate within the feminist community about how much 'choice' there is about wearing those tents. If you ask them, almost all of the women wearing headscarves and many of the women wearing tents will tell you that they do so by their own choice, out of modesty: ie, for the same reason that most women in the America don't go around topless, even in places where it's legal. How much is social pressure and how much is 'choice' is a real devil to ferret out. To take a western example of the same thing, how much of women's lower pay wrt. men's pay is due to their 'choice' in staying home for a couple years to take care of their kids, or in failing to negotiate higher salaries initially or pursue raises afterward (knowing that if they do not do the former, they will be seen as poor mothers, and if they do do the latter, they will be seen as 'ball-breakers' or 'b*****s.') Conservatives will say that all of the pay gap is due to choice, and liberals will say that all if it is due to cultural pressure.

Depending on the particular feminist you speak to, they'll either defend the headscarf as 'choice,' or decry it as 'pressure.'

I think feminism is too confused, they spend too much time fighting with themselves.

On the one hand I think they're damaging to the relationship between men and women and furthering equality between the sexes, regardless of how many feminists claim otherwise. The fact is that you don't have to be a man-hater to be supporting women over men, feminism does just that and as such it is causing as much sexism as it is sexual equality right now.

On the other hand they are still making a lot of headway in women's (and men's) issues such as dealing with issues of body-image/body-hate, slut-shaming, girl-hate, rape, victim-blaming, menstrual activism, reproductive rights (not just abortion)...in the West there are major issues within society that only seem to be getting worse and in many cases seem to be issues that go overlooked, and feminists seem to be the only ones trying to do anything about these sort of issues.

I'm a feminist, as is, by definition, anyone who advocates gender equality.

I'm personally of a radical school.

It's important to note that "feminism" is a philosophy, and includes many more specific beliefs and pragmatisms,
not a singular cohesive group,.

Feminist groups have been present in Middle Eastern & Islamic countries for many, many decades,
(The Revolutionary Association for the Women of Afghanistan, for instance)
many having been murdered and far worse for the work they do.

Last edited by Bethie on 03 Apr 2011, 10:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Not everyone agrees with the definition of feminism as egalitarian. So this statement could be seen as false using a credible definition, aka a definition contained in a credible dictionary, or a definition included in academia.



Really? Which?



Been over this.



Indeed i imagine it would be tough, but that does not explain western silence.

I find myself agreeing with Mary Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Women in that it is folly to consider the rights of women as a separate sphere than the rights of all humans. She would argue that one must argue for equal recognition of human rights, before then arguing about specific subgroups of humanity. She would probably strongly disagree with any form of identity politics, arguing that these are distractions from the real debate over what rights apply to all humans equally.

Yes I think feminism is getting over-extended. All it's doing is breeding a victim mentality. Both sexes are institutionally equal, but generational/cultural inequality has to happen on its own through paradigm shifts rather going from institutionally equal to institutionally reversing preferential treatment. Guaranteed opportunity doesn't lead to guaranteed outcome.

Acknowledging and fighting inequality where it exists is the opposite of "breeding a victim mentality".

The sexes are far from "institutionally equal"- an extremely brief inquiry will reveal men vastly outnumber women as business leaders, managers, University Presidents, legislators, religious leaders, etc. The higher the position, the more likely it is held by a man.

I do not. While there are some extremists (really, what group doesn't have these?) feminism is doing what it's supposed to.

Hence Hillary Clinton's famous "women's rights are human rights" speech.

It's impossible to fight for "equal recognition of human rights" without purposefully-opposing the very hierarchies which perpetuate inequality in the first place.

I really don't know. I mean, Wollstonecraft did live in a different time, but sometimes it is worth acknowledging that different groups face different obstacles and that organizing together as a group to oppose those obstacles is a lot more successful a strategy than trying to defeat ALL inequality and injustice in one swoop. A sort of "specialization of political labour" seems neccessary.

A far more eloquent version of my point.

I think the main problem for feminism in the West is that a lot of people go through the thought(less?) process "WOW, descrimination in the law against women has been eliminated, so THEY MUST BE MOVING TOWARDS EFFECTIVE EQUALITY AT AN UBER PACE!! !". The belief that because inequality is no longer legislated it no longer exists is a truly pernicious element of modern individualist ideology.

I'm not against fighting inequality, I'm against crossing the line and reversing discrimination with BS like affirmative action. Reversing preferential treatment is fighting fire with fire.

You still haven't proven whether these jobs appeal to men more or if there is discrimination on a institutional or cultural level. Yoga appeals to females more than males, and I was one of three dudes in my Challenge and Change in Society course in high school (anthro, socio, and psych all in one).

Here's where we fundamentally differ. I believe gender roles are natural for the most part and are only partially socially constructed. So I think "manly" jobs like construction would naturally appeal to men more so than women. The brain structures of men and women ARE different. not to mention there's testosterone and estrogen. Women are nearly psychic when it comes to reading people since their corpus callosums are like Cable whereas it is like 56k for men, while men tend to be better drivers (Yes, this isn't just a stereotype since men have better spatial perception).

Last edited by AceOfSpades on 03 Apr 2011, 11:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You do recall my statement on the difficulties in using aggregated data to draw essentialist gender distinctions, right?