Why do feminist have such a bad rep?

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There is definitly a need, you cannot romove the core of someone's existence, simply because without it, those people are nothing. That is what feminism is. There will always be need, as it is the core of who we are. And Michjo is just rather ignornt of what feminism is, saying feminism is wrong is exactly the same as saying being a woman is wrong, only using words with slightly different meanings to say so

You are making this very easy for me, if there was a check-list of everything i said regarding why feminism is bad, then you have just ticked everything on the list. Yet again you wash your hands of the issue and say men should campeign for it. Why did feminists campeign for and champion laws that were inherrently sexist? Why are said laws veiwed by feminists in a positive light? Why do they believe they have achieved some kind of victory?

The current legislation came about because of feminism and the current legislation is sexist because of feminism. This is why i say feminism has no place in current society. I'm not claiming it's goals have no place in society but feminism in it's current form is a very negative thing and that's why it gets critisism.


You seem to be suggesting that because women had inequality for thousands of years, it's okay for men to experience inequality. It is not okay for you to minimise or belittle any discrimination. How on earth do you think women came to be so heavily discriminated against in the first place?


Nearly everything you wrote in your last post suggested that feminists do indeed deserve their bad reputation. You are only highlighting my veiw that feminists have a unipolar perception.

You made this one easy for me- If some men really believe they are so hard done by, let them campaign for their rights as women had to.



The current legislation came about to combat sexism and create options. Can you give some facts and prove that is a negative thing, and has no place in society? You have a lot of opinions, so show the working out.



That depends on if maternity leave is actually 'discrimination', doesn't it? Rather than being put in place for the purpose of easing a burden, giving women life choices, and not penalising women for being the only gender able to bear children.



Really... I don't see how.

Feminism

1. the doctrine advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men
2. (sometimes initial capital letter) an organized movement for the attainment of such rights for women.
3. feminine character.

It's not that i am ignorant as to what the world feminism means, the difference stems from the fact that you are (presumably) ignorant as to how dictionarys work.

One can be a feminist and not have a feminine character.
One can be a feminist and have a feminine character.
One can be anti-feminist and have a feminine character.
One can be anti-feminist and not have a feminine character.

The multiple meanings are mutually exclusive by default, the multiple meanings do not stack automatically. Most of the posts in this thread and the link you posted were in the context of meanings (1) and (2). You questioned why feminism and feminists are seen in a bad light, i do not need to differentiate between the different meanings because you asked about the word, not a specific meaning.

The context of my posts is very obvious a well, so it is obvious i am not presenting a veiw about feminine character.

If you have not quite understood this, i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have regarding as to how dictionaries function, and how to get the most efficient use from them.

My critism of feminism is that feminism and feminists only concern themselves with female issues and hence they may inadvenrtently make decisions that are sexist against men. My critisism is that people who concern themselves with equality should fight for both sexs not just one, we are all human after all. I'm happy for you to keep prooving my critisms right...


I have already highlighted the clear sexism between female and male paternity leave. I have given facts, and i have stated why it is a negative thing. The fact you have chosen to ignore this, only suggests that you will chose to ignore further information.


One of my problems with maternity leave and paternity leave, was that they are covered by a unilateral law. Some industries can not and should not have to provide leave of this type. I don't think i'm sexist in this regard. I also think it is unfair that a couple would expect a company to keep a specific job open, if it damages the company in anyway. I can understand how single parents need to have their jobs protected however.

Secondly, i have given an example of how men can be unfairly discriminated against with regards to paternity leave. If the mother of their child dies in labour then the father is only eligable for two weeks off from his job. Past this point his place of work can terminate his contact. Women get 52 weeks, no questions asked. This is clear discrimination, if you chose to belief otherwise, then you are only confirming my critisms of feminism further.


Ironically i didn't expect you to see how. You are still prooving that you can only veiw sexual discrimination from a unipolar point of veiw. Your last post even suggested that male discrimination is acceptable. If you agree with pandd's veiw of feminism, then you'd also agree that you are not actually a feminist.

I detest feminists because feminists are all about advancing womens interests; and since Im not a woman I oppose them on all fronts. The worst thing about feminists is the fact that they have a sense of entitlement. They think that the world owes women something just because they are female. I dont hate all women, but I am NOT going give into womens manipulative rants demanding *victim status* for something they were born with. The men who subjected women to inequality for "thousands of years" are long since dead and since I am not one of them I REFUSE to take any blame for what THEY did and I didnt do.
Thats the unattractive truth about women: give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile. This is why Im so hell-bent on curtailing feminism and womens attempt to take more than their fair share.

Is that a good reason to hate them? No, it is maybe a reason for you to not like them, but not to hate them.



Really? I'm a feminist, and I certainly don't believe I am entitled to anything apart from the right to be myself.



I haven't seen anyone doing this yet. Can you give me some sources?



They certainly aren't dead, and your uneducated response shows this, as you certainly seem to be one of them. Some of us have lived on both sides of the gender fence, and I guarantee you that from my experience as a guy, before accepting myself as female, that the oppression still exists today, the same way as racism still exists today, even in western countries.



You are most likely a heterosexual white male, and I can tell this by the same profiling you used to say this about women, as only heterosexual white males have lived without oppression in such a way that they would see not having someone to oppress as a form of being oppressed.

Pure semantics. He is stating that he will not be judged by people who are no longer alive. Unless there is some type of undocumented vampiric human subgroup, then i would suggest that the people he was reffering to are indeed dead.




Rebecca walker, talking about her celebrated feminist mother, Alice walker.


Of course, women should not goto university, because it only empowers the evil patriarchy to take control of their lives. When Alice Walker spouts such delusional nonsense, she is a champion of all females. If i were to claim women should not goto university, i am sexist.


He raises a good issue, in that many feminists ask for too much. Many feminists do not truly think about what they are asking for and may end up discriminating against men. You then try and twist this around to suggest that he only feels this way because he wishes to have someone to oppress. You suggest he is uneducated, yet you suggest he can never know what it is to be discriminated against because he is a heterosexual white male? I'll let you in on a little secret, everyone has been discriminated against in their life, and everyone knows what it feels like. To suggest a white heterosexual cannot be discriminated against to the same level a female, shows an extreme lack of insight.

The past is gone, we all know that, and those were extreme times that called for extreme people.

Now as for my statement, I simply used the same kind of profiling he used to describe him (which I know could be very false), just for the purpose of showing how bad profiling can be. So don't lump everyone together.

Padium: Yes I am a heterosexual male who happens to be white, but I happen to be VISIBLY ABNORMAL due to very obvious stereotypie's and tic's which make women very uncomfortable when Im in their presence because of their instinctual reaction to a Male with behavioral differences! So my situation in many ways is analogous to the situation faced by heterosexual black males in AmeriKKKa! Thanks to my stereotype behaviours I have been Falsely accused by naive, dumb college girls of stalking and had to spend THOUSANDS of dollars on legal defence when SHE was the one making the accusations so SHE should have to bear the burden of proof!! !! I happen to know for a fact that there were a series of infamous lynchings of black men in the 20s because racist White WOMEN falsely accused them of rape.
I could go on but Im not trying to accuse you of having a sense of entitlement but I do believe that MANY feminists, and many western women certainly DO. If such women are serious about equal rights for both genders then they are going to have to give up their *victim status* and stop whining all the time.

This shows a fundamentally flawed understanding of human behavior. People tend to treat others the way they have been treated themselves. Those who have been oppressed are often VERY EAGER to oppress others when they get the chance! Since feminists feel oppressed Im not the least bit surprised that they target certain men to kick at socially when they have the ability to do so[like men who are obviously disabled for example].

You missed my point completely...

Note the absence in that definition of any need to ignore men, devalue men, ignore male perspectives, etc. So in other words, according to the definition you posited, the majority of your criticisms which rely on claiming feminism is anything other than the pursuit of sex/gender equality, simply do not hold up.



And your criticism is unsound, because “advocating social, political, and all other rights of women equal to those of men” does not require that one only concern themselves with female issues.

And anyone may inadvertently make sexist decisions.

Your criticism ignores the fact than every human is fallible and being non feminist does not make a person any less likely to view things from within their own limited perspective. It ignores the fact that feminism has never excluded males as the so called egalitarian movements you expect us to rely on for equal rights, excluded females throughout history.

Take the French Revolution. That was supposed to be about everyone’s freedom and women were material in the success of the revolutionists but were utterly excluded from the benefits. Olympe de Gouges was executed as an unnatural woman for daring to try to extend the benefits of this so called egalitarian movement to women.

Anyone and everyone, if they are human will make errors of judgment because their perspective is limited. Your criticism then comes down to feminists being human.

But then what about ethnic equality and age equality and animal rights and political system reform and environmental concerns? Should everyone spread their energies thin, with no one understanding anything in depth but everyone striving for everything, understanding nothing?

You have persistently ignored and refused to respond to the point that dedicated efforts are needed for anything useful to be achieved. Any issue needs to be understood to be effectively addressed and this takes time and effort of which there are limited quantities each person may draw on. Specialization is an effective means of addressing the problem of limited resources.

Where one person could attempt to address the needs of many groups and do so ineffectively, by many people each addressing the needs of one particular group, it is possible for specialists to advocate within each area, giving everyone the benefit of their specialist efforts and relying on those not specializing in the area to give fair hearing to the varying perspectives and findings of those who do specialize.

The simple fact is the world is too complex for everyone to know enough about everything to advance everyone’s interests effectively without information and ideas arising from dedicated efforts within in particular areas.


It is less sexist than the absence of this accommodation, and needs not be anything more than a step along the way.

Before feminist efforts no provision existed within the work place to accommodate the necessity and realities of human reproduction. While you might prefer to ignore the fact, or choose (contrary to the definition you provided) to assert such persons must be mistaken in calling themselves feminists, many self identified feminists actually do want and believe there cannot be equality without parental leave as opposed to mere maternity leave. The problem in achieving this is that feminists, like any other group who advocates something which might negatively impact on-what is currently construed as productivity, face formidable barriers in achieving anything that could compromise what is currently construed as productivity.

Because you choose to mis charactertise them as a group.

As a feminist I am not, and would not ever ask you to take the blame for things beyond your control.


You can take the blame for your own ignorant and sexist comments though.

Padium raises a quite relevant point. Generally people who transition from one gender to another give consistent reports that being a treated as a man was superior to the treatment they received when perceived as female. This trend seems to be quite consistent whether the person transitioned to a female identify or to a male identity.

Michjo, Alice Walker is single person.-I am a single person. We both are feminists, so a balanced view would not characterize feminism according to the example of Alice Walker anymore than in accordance with the example of myself. But you prefer to take the worst and most dubious examples (even the maligned, rejected by most feminists and marginal in number separatists who call themselves feminists), while pretending (contrary to the definition you supplied) that anyone pursuing gender/sex equality is not actually a feminist at all. Yet again you demonstrate that your criticisms lack objectivity and balance, and rely on distortion and mischaracterizing the whole according to the most unsavory parts or associations you can find. Again the reason feminism is maligned is demonstrated by its maligners.

According to who? Every female? No, because I am a female and would not accord her my champion for making such an utterance. According to every feminist? No, I am a feminist and I do not accord her my champion for making such an utterance.

Why not quote the feminist and utilitarian J S Mill instead?

Do you view other areas of activism like this? According to you, because PETA is an animal rights activist group that engages in criminal activities, are all animal rights activists criminals in your view,-and is PETA champion to all such activists?


The point he highlights is the lack of balance and objectivity that underlies blanket criticism of feminism. Many people, be they feminists or not, ask too much, do not truly think about what they are asking for, and discriminate against others. That’s not about or caused by feminists. That is an ordinary mundane human failing not restricted to, nor less common outside of feminism.

It is not “women” (as the earlier poster quickly devolved to insulting) who take a mile when offered an inch. It’s people who do that, including but not limited to women.

Those who have most insight into who is most discriminated-against must surely be those who have directly experienced being a woman and being a man, and the reports of those people who have experienced both, is that they experienced more discrimination when perceived as a female than they did as a male.

Note the absence in that definition of any need to include men, attribute value to men, take note of a male perspective, etc. The goals are equality, yet the method does not by default include looking from a male perspective. You can completely ignore a males perspective and be called a feminist.

It's why the SCUM manifesto is feminism. It makes the conclusion that women can never have equality if men are still around. Hence the only logical action is to eliminate men. Feminist ideaolgy concerns females, nothing else.

It's also why seperatist feminism is in the same group as mainstream feminism.


And it does not include looking at things from a male perspective either. Feminist idealogy calls on people to look at how females are treated and what can be done to give them equal oppurtunities. It does not call for the opposite to happen. Feminism is a unipolar idealogy.


I have replied many times, you just ignore my replies.


No, the actual problem is that when said laws were being made, they were touted as a sucess by the majority of feminists because they could not percieve how said laws could possibly be sexists towards men. And even now, you, activebutodd and presumably many other feminists out there, merely minimalise and trivialise this blatent sexist bias. Why? because it concerns men. If it was the other way around, it would be a huge miscarriage of justice and against the natural order of the world.


Feminism does not contain any self-balancing mechanism that prevents it from over-stepping it's mark. Feminist requires on out-side forces to prevent it from overstepping it's mark. People cannot control outside forces, hence feminism is flawed.


You show the same lack of insight as padium. I have been excluded from games, people have refused to talk to me and someone suggested i should die because my father had the nerve to be from ireland. I get dicriminated against in every job interveiw i take because of my autism, and when i do get jobs, i am usually discriminated against and then fired because i do not socialise with my work colleagues enough. There are plenty of females out there who have been discriminated against less than i, and who have had easier lives than me. To claim i couldn't possibly understand what it is to be discriminated against as a women is non-sensicle.

Padium asked for an example, he was given an example. Stop being pedantic.


You are not comparing like for like.

Now, try being a woman with the exact same other conditions, it would get worse guaranteed. We are not looking at those variables, but strictly the variable of sex. If you are going to use experiments, even though experiments, where more than one issue is a variable, that is proof of trying to make a biased argument, unless of course you specifically set out to test all possibilities within those variable parameters as the scientific method would require... Even for a thought experiment as you have presented. So, lets look at all those variable combinations again then.

Male, NT: Discriminated against the least.

Female, NT: Discriminated against more than Male, NT, but less than other combinations.

Male, ASD: Discriminated against more than Female, NT, Less than Female, ASD.

Female, ASD: Discriminated against the most within these two parameters.

Scaling is irrelevent, the claim was that i (and men) could never understand the scale at which a female is discriminated against. The claim could not be further from the truth, i have experienced more discrimination than most of the female population. I know all too well what it is to be discriminated against.

It's a comment arguement used by feminists to win arguements, "You are not female, you could never understand". It's an offensive comment, that completely lacks insights and only re-affirms critisism of feminism.